


Kindred

by tielan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Drama, Gen, Off-World, action-adventure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-31
Updated: 2011-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Khenar Lian of the Noyians is young, charismatic, and resents Atlantis’ influence in the Pegasus galaxy. It’s no surprise that he and John don’t get along. But when John’s team discover what Lian is hiding, will even their assistance in fighting the Wraith be sufficient to win them this ally?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kindred

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written in May 2006, before Kanaan was even thought of in canon, and before we discovered John's background. As a result, several concepts in it may have been jossed. Set between 'Grace Under Pressure' and 'The Long Goodbye'

“Am I the only one getting a bad feeling about this?” John asked quietly as they followed Teyla and the Noyian leader up through the hills where the Noyian encampment lay.

It was nothing more than the faintest sense of unease, the portentous stillness that John had learned meant trouble; but it had been nagging him since they met Khenar Lian.

Oh, Lian was friendly, charming, and had greeted them with some surprise but rather more eagerness. Of course, most of that eagerness was presently being directed at Teyla - an avidity that seemed just shy of obsessive. He’d looked over John, Rodney, and Ronon one by one, summed them up and turned his attention to Teyla.

Initially, John wasn’t sure whether to be amused or slighted.

Right now, he was mostly irked and trying to work out why.

“You know, there’s no need to go all Han Solo on us,” Rodney remarked, pausing to pant a little from the climb. While the scientist was reasonably fit - ‘fit’ as compared to his state of body when he’d begun on the expedition nearly eighteen months ago - he still had a tendency to get easily winded.

Usually, John made allowances for him. Today, however, John wasn’t the one setting the pace. The Noyian leader was clearly used to these hills - and used to walking with people who could keep up with him.

Ronon glanced back at Rodney, then looked up at the green-grey hills with their scrubby stands of brush and trees that leaned at drunken angles. For a moment, John thought the other man would agree with him. The broad shoulders shrugged. “I’m not picking anything up.”

And with that, Ronon walked on.

 _Expressive as ever._ There were times when John despaired of the newest member of his team. Not that Ronon wasn’t impressive or good at what he did, just that he had a tendency to do things his way. Teyla usually had the most success drawing him out or reining him in, although John was pleased with the not-quite-friendship that had sprung up between him and Ronon.

John turned to Rodney. He hadn’t gotten an answer from the scientist yet - mostly because he was still catching his breath.

“It depends on exactly what kind of a bad feeling you’re expecting, Sheppard. I mean, he’s being friendly, and Teyla trusts him.” And that was enough for Rodney, who didn’t have either military training or quite the same degree of suspicious nature as John or Ronon. John wished he could be so easily assured.

Far above them, a bird screeched, its strident cry carrying through the hills. Both men looked up, watching the circling speck as it tilted pinions and soared through the cool air.

“Do you think we’re being led into an ambush?” Rodney asked. “Seriously? I mean, he might be a Gennii spy or something.”

John didn’t wince at the somewhat dramatic suggestion. Relations with the Gennii had never been cordial - particularly after the incident with Kolya and the attempt to take over Atlantis - but the two civilisations were presently at uncomfortable truce. Still, he glanced up the ridge where Teyla, Lian, and Ronon were making their steady way up to the Noyian camp, scanning for places where they could be picked off or trapped.

“I don’t think it’s an ambush,” he said. “But keep your eyes open,” John added, only too aware that Rodney wasn’t the team-mate he really needed on the lookout. “Come on,” he said with slight slap to Rodney’s shoulder. “Last one to the top’s a rotten egg!”

Rodney rolled his eyes but heaved himself up with a groan. Most of it was for show. Rodney would survive.

As he watched the other guy move off, a low ripple of laughter floated down from ahead of them, and John’s concern grew. Teyla wasn’t usually this friendly to strangers - at least, not so fast. She’d taken a whole morning to warm to him, even, and her friendship with the Gennii had been polite - although that had been more because they were withholding secrets than anything else.

Something was up with Khenar Lian and the Noyians. John just knew it.

 --

John got a disbelieving look at the request but Ronon dropped behind to hurry Rodney along while he caught up with Teyla and their host.

In spite of their differences, Rodney and Ronon got along quite well. The scientist eased back on the derogatory comments regarding brawn and the military, and the Satedan responded by asking questions that interrupted Rodney’s dialogues. And by not threatening him.

John could count on Ronon to keep his eyes out for trouble, at least. He might not be getting the same feeling that John was, but he followed John’s lead.

Usually, John would have said he could count on Teyla to follow his lead, too.

As he moved up behind them, John picked up the strains of the conversation taking place between her and Lian.

“...considered a challenge among our young men to hunt the _hireni_ without any armour,” Lian was saying. “Boasting rights, if nothing else.”

There was a lilt of laughter to Teyla’s voice as she answered, “The custom exists among my people also - although both male and female youth attempt it. There is status involved in returning with kills and without injury.”

“As is the situation here,” Lian said, pausing with a smile intended to charm her. “You attempted it?”

“I did,” she replied. “As did you.”

John was irritated to realise Teyla wasn’t phrasing it as a question. “Sounds like hazing,” he offered, hoping to break in on the conversation.

From the expression on Lian’s face, the interruption was unexpected and unwelcome. “Hazing?”

John tried to explain. “It’s like...tricks they play on you - practical jokes when you start in a new unit. To make you feel welcome,” he added. “At the Academy, they’d kidnap you sometime in your first month, strip you of your wallet and ID and leave you in the middle of nowhere to make your way back. It’s a character building experience.”

As well as a chance to see what newcomers were made of. Nothing showed up a person’s true nature like a little adversity, frustration, and humiliation - although John had to admit that was rarely the main motivation for hazing.

Lian turned to Teyla, a question in his face. She smiled at him, brief and warm, before glancing at John. “Where they came from, they have no need to fear the Wraith. Their lives are different to ours.”

“So I see,” Lian murmured. “And you came to our worlds seeking conquest?”

“Knowledge, actually.” He wasn’t going to rise to the bait.

“What knowledge?”

“Oh, we pretty much wanted to know about the Ancients.” At another questioning glance from Lian to Teyla, John elaborated. “You guys call them the Ancestors.”

“We have heard rumours of a people living in the city of the Ancestors.” Lian’s gaze was cool as they rested on John. “That is you?”

“That would be us. Was us.”

The Noyian nodded. “We do not trade often, for that gives the Wraith reason to hunt us down; but when we do, we trade in information as well as goods.” He glanced from one to the other, then beyond them at Ronon and Rodney as they climbed up beside them. “Your presence is much spoken-of.”

John grinned, then paused. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” A glance at Teyla and the tolerant amusement on her face reassured him before she even spoke.

“It is a good thing, Colonel,” she said. “I would not remain with you if it were not.”

He was pretty sure she meant the expedition as a whole, but a part of John was pleased that Lian looked from Teyla to him and back with narrow eyes, reaching conclusions that were probably wrong.

Not that John would tell the guy that things weren’t like that between him and Teyla.

“Having a party?” Rodney asked, huffing and puffing from behind them. “Are we there yet?”

“If you ask again, I’m going to make you get out and walk,” John told his friend with mock-severity. Then he sighed when the Noyian gave him the bewildered looks that were now standard for Pegasus natives when faced with the Atlantis expedition. “Never mind. It’s a standing joke from our planet...” He contemplated explaining about road trips, confined spaces, travel times, and family holidays...and gave up.

Some things were just too tricky for a people whose idea of a good life was one where they didn’t have to spend it on the run from the Wraith.

He doubted Lian would be interested in the explanation anyway.

Ronon, by now familiar with John’s odd phrases, was ignoring the conversation and surveying the hills with his usual wariness. He paused. “We’re being watched.”

John began turning, his right hand reaching for his sidearm.

“For a while now,” Lian said cheerfully, before he raised his voice. “Umaya!”

There was a brief rattle of rocks and leaves, and a girl drifted out of the scrub and onto the path like a ghost, barely twenty feet away.

John stared.

She wasn’t more than sixteen or seventeen, with dark blonde hair, dark eyes and stunning features. Sure, there were good-looking women in Atlantis; hell, John worked with Teyla and Elizabeth on a daily basis. But this girl was...breathtaking.

He was pretty sure that both Rodney and Ronon were staring, too. At least, he hoped it wasn’t just him.

Dressed in a hide jerkin over rough-spun trousers, the girl eyed them one by one, starting with Teyla and finishing with Rodney, then turned to Lian whose sharp blue eyes were watching all of their reactions with a calculating eye. “You’re making enough noise that a herd of _hireni_ could come up on you and you’d never notice.” Her tone was sharp as an irritated mother’s.

“If _hireni_ came through these hills,” the Noyian man said dryly, “it _would_ be noticed. Umaya, these are Teyla Emmagen and her friends: Ronon, John, and Rodney.”

John noted the order of introduction and raised an eyebrow at Teyla, who looked slightly surprised at her designation as the foremost of their team. Rodney was more direct. “ _Teyla’s_ friends?”

The Noyians regarded them with identical expressions of surprise. Definitely related - maybe cousins. “You are not her friends?” Umaya asked, looking at John.

“Oh, we’re her friends,” John said. “We’re just not used to being introduced like that.”

Lian exchanged a glance with the kid. “So...how would you prefer to be introduced?”

“Dr. Rodney McKay, Specialist Ronon Dex, Colonel John Sheppard,” he said, pointing to his team-mates, then himself. “And Teyla, whom you obviously already know.”

The Noyian’s eyes narrowed. “I see.” Lian turned to Teyla. “And you have no objections to this?”

Rodney bridled; “Why do you keep asking her? Are we see-through or something? Do we smell bad?” He held up one hand in a quelling gesture. “Don’t even _think_ of answering that, Sheppard!”

John was going to answer, but Teyla’s voice cut off Rodney’s tirade. “It is more customary for people to simply introduce us,” she explained to Lian.

“I see.” Lian shrugged and turned to the girl whose eyes had been taking all this in with the avidity of the young and sheltered. “Umaya, run ahead to the steading and let them know we come behind.” When she scowled at him, he only warned, “Umaya...”

With a last glance at John’s team - starting with Teyla and finishing with a long narrow-eyed look at John - Umaya shrugged and went, vanishing into the scrub and rocks with the same stealth with which she’d appeared. The Ops side of John found himself admiring the way the girl moved - she could give some of the guys he’d worked with lessons on covert intrusions. It helped that she was a beauty to watch.

He watched the lines of the hills, picking out possible hiding spots, and wondered if there were other kids out there, watching them from a distance - or from up close. They were used to the suspicion of adults, but children were usually more trusting - like Jinto and Wex.

Obviously not among the Noyians.

“She is independent,” Teyla said quietly to Lian.

“And you were not at her age?”

The indulgent note in Lian’s voice turned John’s gaze from the hills. The man had taken a step closer to Teyla, standing in her personal space and focusing all his attention on her.

John frowned as Teyla held her ground. “I was,” she said, meeting the Noyian’s gaze, serene and even. “As were you.”

Beyond them, Ronon had his eyebrows somewhere up in his hairline, and Rodney was mouthing at John, _As were you?_ With a shrug and a pointed cough to interrupt Teyla’s little stare-off with her admirer, John indicated the direction in which the girl had apparently vanished. “Maybe we should get along to your camp?”

Teyla glanced at him, then regarded Lian - almost challengingly, John thought. There was something going on, and he’d ask Teyla about it later, when the Noyian wasn’t around.

Assuming the Noyian allowed Teyla out of his sight, he thought sourly as they started back up the track again.

Lian was still talking almost solely to Teyla.

 --

The ‘steading’ was a city of tents, spread out through this valley in the hills for as far as John could see. Other than all the houses being tents, it looked like most of the villages they’d seen on other planets: dwellings complete with paths and gardens, public squares and people moving about their business.

“Two hundred,” Ronon said as they paused at the ridge, waiting for Rodney. Lian had drawn Teyla on and, after a glance back at her team-mates labouring behind, she went. “Maybe three.”

John regarded the spread of tents and the people moving industriously through. It reminded him of the Athosians the first time he’d walked into their camp - only larger. “Doing pretty well to hide from the Wraith that long.”

The bigger guy shrugged, “Survival. It happens.” And Ronon would know.

“What do you think of Khenar Lian?”

Ronon smirked. “He wants to bed Teyla.”

“Other than that.”

Another shrug. “You think he’s up to something?”

“When was the last time you saw Teyla this friendly with a strange guy?” John asked.

Overhead, a flock of birds few in V-shaped formation, their odd, honking calls echoing over the valley. Ronon watched them go. “Is it Lian or his interest you’re suspicious of?”

John wasn’t sure he liked what Ronon was implying. “Both.”

“Okay.” The other man’s mouth pulled up one side in a lopsided grin. “I can keep an eye on her. But Teyla’s not stupid.”

“No. But she’s not usually like this.” And John didn’t like it.

Rodney scrambled up the last stretch and sighed in relief as he beheld the tent city spread out below them. “Oh, thank God. I thought we’d never get here.”

“Too much messing about in the labs, not enough exercise, Rodney,” said John, conversationally. “You should join Ronon and I in a run sometime.”

“Oh, yes, that would be wonderful,” Rodney snapped. “I’m sure that expiring of heart failure in Atlantis is _so_ much better than expiring of heart failure on some planetoid that doesn’t even have the decency to live anywhere near the Gate!”

“Look at it this way, Rodney. We wouldn’t have to go too far to get Carson on the job.” John played the ingénue for all it was worth - baiting Rodney was one of his favourite pastimes. Hey, if he had to put up with the man, then at least he could have some fun out of it.

“Carson would probably refuse to come,” sulked the scientist, leaning against the boulder that marked the top of the hill.

Ronon smirked as he slapped Rodney familiarly on the shoulder. “Do you good, McKay.”

“Oh, please. I’m not going to go running with you just so Sheppard can feel less inadequate when you outpace him. That’s what Major Lorne’s for. Or Lieutenant Cadman. I’m sure Carson would love to minister to _her_ if she had heart failure.”

“Jealous?”

“Of _Carson_? Of course not.”

“Actually, I was thinking of Cadman.” He dodged Rodney’s attempt to cuff him, smirking - not that the blow would have done anything other than briefly sting.

“Colonel?” Teyla’s voice came through his radio earpiece, with the faint, weird overtone that meant she wasn’t entirely out of earshot. “Has Rodney reached you?”

John took a few steps down the path, away from Rodney so the scientist couldn’t hit him again. “Yeah, just got here. He’s catching his breath. We’ll be on our way down in a minute.”

“I will be waiting at the turn-off,” came the response a second later. “There is a fork in the paths.”

“We’ll be there in a minute,” he assured her. Then, because he couldn’t quite stop the question, he asked, “Did Lian desert you?”

“He was required to go ahead and make the camp ready for our arrival,” Teyla said. “However, he has left one of the youths here to take us down the rest of the way.”

So he wouldn’t have to listen to the other man trying to smarm Teyla the rest of the way down. That was definitely a good thing. “Well, I’ll send Ronon ahead to keep you company, and Rodney and I will be along in a moment.” A jerk of the head at Ronon and the other man started down the slope, moving with all the agility of a mountain goat.

“We will be waiting.”

Rodney sighed as he looked at the long trek down the slope. “Remind me why we couldn’t bring the ‘jumper?”

“Because we’re suspicious bastards.”

“There’s no point in being suspicious _dead_ bastards.”

“Rodney, you’re the best-looking dead person I’ve ever seen,” John told him dryly. “And I’ve seen a lot of them. Keep walking.”

The best thing about Rodney was that he was good at arguing, and okay at walking, but not so great at doing both together. The result was that a moving Rodney was a mostly quiet Rodney. Mostly.

“So you don’t like the Noyian guy?”

“Let’s just say, I’m not convinced he’s as wonderful as he thinks he is.”

“Sheppard, _you’re_ not as wonderful as you think you are.”

“And look who’s talking,” John said with exquisite irony.

Rodney was definitely making faster progress downhill than he had uphill. Apparently the prospect of some long-term rest was galvanising him. “No, I _am_ as brilliant as none of you ever say I am. Because I’ve kept your hide - and the hides of several billion other people - intact--”

“Single-handedly.”

Sometimes Rodney got sarcasm, sometimes he didn’t. This was obviously going to be one of the times when he didn’t. “--Single-handedly, for the last two years and-- Wha--?”

A small figure had moved out of the scrub brandishing a slim spear-like object.

John’s first, startled thought was that it was a Wraith.

Then he realised the ‘Wraith’ was all of three feet tall, wore a leather tunic that barely reached the middle of its thighs, and had skin a shade darker than Teyla, nut-brown and sun-tanned. A silvery cuff gleamed on one small wrist, an old design. John dropped his hand from the weapon he’d instinctively reached for upon seeing the twisted, garish features and the pale, streaming hair.

“What the hell is that?” Rodney gasped from behind him.

“It’s a Wraith mask,” John said as the masked head tilted to one side, almost inquiringly. “Jinto has one.”

From behind the mask came a high, piping voice. “Who’s Jinto?”

“A friend of mine.”

“And he has one of these?” The voice sounded slightly disappointed.

“Yep.” It was hard to tell if the kid was a boy or girl from either voice or figure - certainly the kid was a good few years younger than Jinto. But he or she was still handling the spear with the kind of grip that spoke of competence with the weapon. John figured it was best to go for the harmless-and-conversational angle. “You know, I’m sure you’re much nicer to look at without the Wraith mask, so why don’t you take it off?”

There was a thoughtful silence. “But I’m not as scary without the mask.”

Kid logic. No arguing with it. “No,” John said with a faint smile. “But we’d prefer you weren’t so scary.”

“Really?” Off came the mask with gratifying immediacy, and the youngster beamed up at John from beneath a thatch of jaw-length dark hair. “I’m Anneka,” she said, squinting up at the two men. “Why’s he hiding behind you?” Her eyes widened in delight. “Was I that scary?”

John fought back the urge to laugh as Rodney spluttered and stepped away from John. “Of course not,” he said. “I was just...startled.”

“Oh.” The kid eyed them, clearly disappointed with this answer. She also seemed to be considering their clothes. “You’re not from the village.”

John figured it was time to bring out the introductions. “I’m John, and this is Rodney. We’re...uh, headed down to the village, Anneka. Would you like to show us the way?”

Anneka thought about this, then transferred the Wraith mask to the same hand as her spear, stepped forward to take John’s larger hand in her own small one, and started off down the path again without a word.

Rodney muttered something about ‘children and animals’ that John could only just hear, and began following them, his feet crunching across the packed scree that made up the path into the valley.

Anneka’s silence lasted for the first few steps. Then, “Are you from through the Ring of the Ancestors? I’ve never been through it, although Lian has promised that someday I’ll get to go. Makhel says you get sick from going through, but I never get sick from anything!” She looked back at John who was highly amused by the steady stream of chatter - as friendly towards the strangers as Lian and the girl had been wary. “Are you okay? You’re all quiet. The adults say I talk too much. You haven’t said that yet.”

Rodney muttered something that John really hoped the kid didn’t hear. He smiled reassuringly. “I don’t usually say that about people I don’t know very well.”

“I do,” came the mutter from behind.

“Yes, Rodney, but you have no tact.”

“What’s tact?” The kid jumped topic without a moment’s hesitation, twisting her head to look back at John again.

“It’s...politeness.”

“Oh, please,” Rodney snorted. “It’s telling lies that people want to hear.”

Rodney _would_ think that. John merely smiled at Anneka as she led them down past the dull grey rocks from which small scrubby bushes grew towards the light. “Politeness.” The kid was smart enough to pick it up without any more help from John.

They found Teyla and Ronon waiting for them with an adolescent boy who was torn between trying to impress Teyla and trying not to be impressed by Ronon.

His expression changed as he saw the little girl. “Oh, Anneka! You were supposed to stay with Milla this morning!”

John found his hand dropped as Anneka stuck her hands on her hips and glared. “Milla’s being silly over Makhel. Besides,” she said, “I found these people looking for the village. See?”

Teyla’s mouth twitched, and John couldn’t help a grin at the child’s proprietary attitude. The boy was less impressed.

“Don’t be silly,” he said scornfully. “Lian had me wait here to show them down into the village.”

The small, brown face crumpled in disappointment as she turned to John. “But you were looking for the village!”

“We were,” John said, trying to sound reassuring. “You did a good job of leading us here.”

“But you were already coming here!”

At a loss for what to say - generally, John was pretty good with kids - he was relieved when Teyla answered for him.

“That does not mean you did not do a good job, Anneka,” she said gently. As the boy opened his mouth to protest, she silenced him with a flick of large dark eyes. He flushed and subsided, with an expression that was a hair shy of sulky. “Thank you for bringing our friends here. Now, you and Vilor can take us the rest of the way.”

Vilor opened his mouth to protest; John shook his head at the boy, then was startled when Anneka grabbed his hand so her cuff banged against his wrist bone and began pull him down the track. “I’ll lead,” she said, tugging him past his amused team-mates and the resentful boy.

A glance back showed Ronon following with a broad grin of amusement on his face as he watched John being led away by the child. Beyond him, Teyla was touching Vilor’s arm, saying something to the disappointed youth as Rodney made his way past.

“Vilor thinks he’s important, just because he’s the oldest boy,” Anneka said. “But Umaya’s nearly two moons older than him - and she’s better at everything.” The girl glanced up at John. “I’m going to be better at everything when I’m older.”

“That’s a good goal to try for.”

A slight frown appeared on the immature features. “What’s a goal?”

Behind John, Ronon chuckled.

“Fine,” he said. “You explain it.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re from Pegasus and I’m not.”

“What’s Pegasus?” Anneka asked, her high, piping voice curious with childish innocence.

Ronon smirked at John. John glared back.

It was going to be a long way down to the camp. And there was still lunch to go.

  --

In the end lunch wasn’t as bad as John thought it would be.

Yes, Lian fawned over Teyla, but in the context of lunch, it seemed to be a Noyian thing. There was a young man serving Rodney, a woman serving Ronon, and the stunning Umaya stalked out of the shadows and presented herself as John’s lunch companion in the open-sided food tent.

Beyond the boundaries of the tent, the Noyians went about their business, while groups of children came by, led by the energetic Anneka, who waved enthusiastically when John turned to meet her gaze and then ran off with another batch of kids.

The Noyians were a growing populace, unlike the Athosians. As John watched the men and women make their way past the tent, frequently contriving to look over him and his team-mates, he noticed that most of the women of childbearing age were pregnant - including some girls who weren’t much older than Umaya.

Certainly, the girl acted considerably older than any sixteen year-old John had ever known.

“The _hireni_ meats are marinated in _tlaca_ and fermented _illyet_ ,” she told him as she deposited food on his plate with all the solicitousness of a possessive girlfriend. “The baked _miragena_ were made by Helana. Lian likes them.” The last statement was sourly directed at the Noyian leader, who was trying to persuade Teyla to eat the _miragena_ from his fingers.

John frowned. Teyla was refusing to take the food directly from Lian’s fingers - which was, to his mind, just as well. He certainly wasn’t going to eat from Umaya’s fingers - even if she was holding the _hireni_ meat up to his lips. “Uh, thanks,” he said, a little uncomfortably as he took the food from her. “I can feed myself.”

Considering the girl had to be at least twenty years his junior and probably underage by Earth terms, John was not about to get into any compromising situations - even if the girl was considered old enough among her people. Adult women were one thing, yes; John definitely drew the line at teenaged girls. He wasn’t a dirty old man. Hell, he wasn’t even old.

Umaya didn’t seem all that happy about it, but shrugged and let John eat his lunch.

The _hireni_ tasted slightly gamey, with a nutty-ish flavour. The _miragena_ looked like a variant of a vegetable Teyla’s people grew as one of their staples - a potato-like root that they used for everything, from grinding it into flour to baking it as an accompaniment to their meat.

“So,” he said, trying to make general conversation. “How long have you lived in this valley?”

Lian looked up from his plate. “Nearly four years now. It is a good place for us - the river nearby with its fertile banks, and the hunting that comes for water.”

“The Wraith haven’t bothered you, then?” Rodney piped up from where he was cautiously poking around the things on his plate. The young man had been remarkably patient with the fussy scientist, who’d been somewhat placated by Teyla’s reminder that the citrus to which he was allergic was uncommon in the Pegasus galaxy.

“They come,” Lian said. “But they usually leave empty-handed. We are...good at hiding.”

“In a camp this size?” John was surprised.

“When the Wraith come, we have taught our people to know where they must go, what must be done at the first warning.” Blue eyes fixed on John. “There are those among us who know the techniques to bring down Wraith who reach the ground. In the end, we are no less prepared when the Wraith come than other cultures we have seen.”

“So you hide?”

Lian frowned. “What else is there to do?”

“Fight back,” said Ronon.

“Fighting back only incites their wrath,” said Lian shortly. “We do not have the numbers to defeat them, nor the tools.”

“But you’ve had people who managed to bring down individual Wraith before?”

“I said that there are those among us who know how to bring down the Wraith that reach our ground.” Lian spoke shortly. “We are not a warlike people,” he said, “any more than Teyla tells me her people are, but we protect our own.”

John wondered exactly what Teyla had told the guy about the Atlanteans. “We’re not warlike,” he said tersely. “As Teyla should have told you.”

“Colonel Sheppard’s people are better prepared to fight the Wraith than we,” Teyla said, flicking a wary gaze at John from beneath her lashes. “They have resources that we lack - they do not fear the Wraith the way many of our peoples do.”

“And this is why you ally with them?” Lian asked. “What of your own people? Do they not need your leadership?”

“Teyla’s people seem pretty well-adjusted to her coming and going,” John said. “They don’t live all that far from where we live.”

“But that is not the same as living among one’s people,” pointed out Lian. “As Teyla surely knows.”

Teyla’s reply was short. “My people understand that I cannot live among them and fight the Wraith.”

If the Noyian caught the irritation, he ignored it. “Yet it must be difficult living apart from your family and friends.”

Even Rodney reared up from his plate at that.

John bit back the immediate scathing retort that hovered on his lips.

Teyla hesitated.

“She’s got us,” Ronon said into the silence. The way he said it made it quite clear that _he_ considered it enough.

Looking at Teyla, John wasn’t so sure she thought of it that way. And Carson had mentioned Teyla’s grief after her mentor died - about her feeling alone - something that John had been too busy to think about until now.

Sometime soon, he was going to have a chat with Teyla about family being what you made of it and the people you could rely on to be there for you.

“But, forgive me,” said Lian, continuing the conversation, “that cannot be the same as being among those who truly understand you, who know from where you came.”

“She came from Athos,” said Ronon dryly.

“Ronon.” Teyla fixed him with a glare as stern as any parent, then turned to Lian. “It is not the same,” she told him. “But I have friends among the Atlanteans as surely as I did among my own people.” Her eyes flickered briefly to John, then to Ronon and Rodney, “And we are fighting the Wraith. That is more than my people have been able to do in generations.”

Lian looked at her for a long moment. “And are you winning?”

This time, Teyla looked at John to give the answer.

“We’re making progress,” John said pointedly, not liking what the Noyian was implying. “And we’re not dead yet.” He held the other man’s gaze for another long moment, refusing to look away first. Maybe it was what Rodney tended to call ‘a comparative testosterone calibration’, but John had pride in Atlantis, in the people there, and in his team-mates and their individual skills. No, everything wasn’t perfect, and they weren’t exactly winning against the Wraith, but they were doing what they could with what they had - and they’d survived so far.

He wasn’t going to sit by while Khenar Lian of the Noyians sneered at it.

“I see.” The Noyian regarded John for a few seconds, then turned with something like a shrug to quiz Ronon about his background.

Rodney met John’s gaze, shrugged and continued eating - there were few things that could distract Rodney from his work and his food for very long. The young man assigned to serve him watched him eat with something like amazement - or horror. When Rodney wasn’t thinking about something else, he definitely focused on his food.

Beside John, Umaya shifted long limbs, her young face oddly intent as she looked from John to Lian and back to John again. He gave her a brief smile but turned his gaze to Teyla as she continued to eat and listen to Ronon’s answers and both Lian and the woman’s questions about Sateda.

After a moment, she lifted her eyes to meet his and arched an eyebrow in query.

John went back to eating, listening to Lian’s questions and Ronon’s answers.

A group of young men walked by, carrying the carcass of a dead beast on poles, and laughing and boasting of their kill as they went by. John noticed more than a few glances cast at Umaya as the youths’ tales were told. One or two gazes lingered on Teyla’s profile as she smiled at something Ronon said, and fingers pointed at her before they saw John watching them, and they hurried away, casting anxious glances behind them.

John really was having a bad feeling about this. He didn’t know why, but the Noyians - their culture, their people, their behaviour, their leader - it all grated on his nerves.

“You have fought the Wraith?” Umaya asked, interrupting his thoughts. John found her dark eyes fixed on him as she pushed back a strand of sunlight-blonde hair with exquisite grace. “Personally?”

“Lots of times,” he said, a little surprised by her words. From what Lian had said, he’d expected that there’d have been quite a few of her own people who’d personally fought a Wraith warrior. “You haven’t fought the Wraith when they come?”

“Most of us hide in caves when they come,” the girl said. Judging by the sound of it, she didn’t think much of hiding. “Caves honeycomb these hills - more than enough space for everyone, and the Wraith can be held off.”

Hence the choice of location. Still, John couldn’t help asking. “How long since the Wraith were last here?”

Umaya shrugged. “Many years. We still have the weapons we took from them.”

“Really?” Across the tent, John saw Rodney perk up, and asked the question he knew the scientist would want asked. “What kind of weapons?”

“The usual,” Lian interrupted with a warning look at Umaya. “What you must have seen before among the Wraith.”

“Maybe.” And maybe not. “It would be good to check, though - see if there’s anything new we could use.” As Lian opened his mouth to say that the weapons belonged to the Noyians - as if they were using them! - John added, “We’d be willing to trade for them. A fair trade.”

Lian glanced sideways at Teyla who nodded slightly. John tried not to lose his cool at the Noyian’s evident distrust. “We would agree to a price if they are weapons we do not have,” she said, her voice cool and smooth. “If you did not wish to give them to us outright, then the Atlanteans are willing to pay for their use for a set time.”

“Borrowing?”

“With appropriate recompense,” she said.

And that seemed to be everything he had to say on the matter.

“He’ll think it over,” Umaya said after Lian had returned to his conversation with Ronon. She leaned in towards John and spoke quietly so only he could hear.

“He seems pretty...suspicious.”

The girl shrugged. “He has been friendlier to you than he has to any others who have come to see us.”

Which made him wonder just how ‘friendly’ Lian usually was. “Because of Teyla?”

“She’s not bonded, is she?” Umaya asked, turning to him.

He guessed that ‘bonded’ meant the same thing as being married. “No.” John frowned as he looked across the low table to his team-mate. “But she’s got other responsibilities.”

“To you?”

John regarded the girl sharply. “To her _people_.”

Umaya seemed more amused than dismayed by his shortness. “Do her people live among yours?”

“No. They’re not comfortable where we live.”

“You are alien to us,” Umaya said. “Your thoughts run differently to ours.”

“Our thoughts?”

The girl turned her head, watching Teyla laugh at something Ronon said to the woman ensconced beside him. “She and he - they do not think of you as their people.”

John found himself thinking that Lian wasn’t the only arrogant Noyian.

Umaya was wrong - had to be wrong. Both Teyla and Ronon were dedicated to the fight against the Wraith in their own ways, but they’d integrated into Atlantis, lived in the city alongside the Earth personnel and worked with them daily. John could think of very few people that he’d trust to watch his back, even if neither of them were exactly military standard.

And yes, they were different - and were thought of differently - because they _were_.

That didn’t mean they didn’t belong.

That didn’t mean they weren’t John’s people.

 --

“Were Teyla’s people like this when you met them?” Rodney asked as he looked around at the tents and the people going about their tasks.

John smiled at another knot of adolescents who giggled behind their hands and recalled that Rodney hadn’t been of the group who originally went out looking for another place to live when it looked like the shields around Atlantis weren’t going to hold up against the water. “Pretty much.”

“So they’ve come quite a long way.”

“Yep.”

The Athosians were more than willing to accept what help the Atlantis expedition was willing to offer in terms of knowledge. To that, they added the information Teyla gained from her occasional studies of Earth culture and technology - ways that her people could improve their lives, adapting and merging the Athosian equipment and materials to Earth concepts.

Oh, the Athosians had the odd pieces of very-advanced technology here and there, but Teyla said much of it had been lost in the cullings and was now little more than a memory. Her people had been focused on their survival and the survival of the community rather than gaining a platform from which the Wraith could be fought, and as their numbers dwindled, keeping everyone safe and fed was more important than weapons and rebellion.

Rodney didn’t generally bother himself with the Athosians - they were too low a level of technology for him to have any interest in Teyla’s people as anything other than just ‘her people’. There were a few expedition personnel who took a more steady interest in the Athosians - mostly medical and anthropological, but that didn’t seem to bother Teyla.

Watching his team-mate up ahead as she walked beside Lian, telling him about the ways of her people, John wondered if she _did_ mind that her team-mates never really inquired about the people she’d promised to lead and just didn’t say. It was hard to tell with Teyla - she kept her emotions to herself and didn’t share them with many people.

He definitely needed to have a few words with her.

The walk back would probably be the best time - assuming Lian didn’t attach himself to them on the way back as well.

John would have to figure out a way to dissuade the Noyian from following them back to their ship, though. Lian was almost hovering over Teyla again. Then again, she didn’t seem to be minding it too much. Ronon certainly wasn’t minding the woman who’d looped an arm through his and was nearly leaning against his shoulder.

“Ronon seems to be making friends,” Rodney muttered, his thoughts paralleling John’s as a peal of laughter rang out from the woman - her name was apparently Delyn. Their Satedan team-mate smirked with the pleasure of a guy who’d just made a pretty woman laugh.

Now, if Delyn had been John’s lunch partner instead of the lovely-if-disconcerting-and-underage Umaya...

“It’s called getting to know the locals, Rodney,” John said, watching Delyn point something out to Ronon across the camp. “You should try it sometime.”

The noise the other man made was something between a snort and a scoff. “I’ll leave the Kirking to you, Sheppard.”

Never mind that the sum total of women John had actually slept with in this galaxy was a grand total of two. And both had been...extenuating situations: Chaya’s mind-blowing sharing-of-souls thing had led to intimacy, and he’d been stuck in the commune for over five months - in his time - when Teer made her offer, never mind that only a few hours had passed outside.

Other than that, it wasn’t John’s fault that women liked him.

Of course, he would never say that to Rodney, who was fun to tease.

“Jealous?”

“Why would I be jealous?” Rodney asked, defensive at the first sign that anyone was denigrating his social ability. “Some of us prefer intellectual stimuli to more...earthy motivations.”

“There’s nothing ‘earthy’ about being friendly with the locals,” John said with lofty superiority. “Or being friendly at all. You might try it sometime.”

“I _am_ friendly! I talk to people when we’re exchanging technical information.”

“I meant socially,” he said, shaking his head. “In social situations. Like lunch.”

“What?” Rodney asked. “The kid didn’t want to talk.”

“Or you interrupted him every time he tried - or just kept eating.”

“I was hungry!”

“The food wasn’t going anywhere!” John held up a hand to stall Rodney’s next response. He’d been keeping track of the conversation ahead and a slight change in tone had caught his ear. He picked up the pace as Teyla stopped and turned back towards them. Or, more correctly, towards Ronon and Delyn. John saw her lips move in a question that he only just heard the end of.

“...have Ancestor artefacts here?”

Delyn paused, disconcerted by the response. “I...they are...” Beyond Teyla, John saw Lian’s expression harden and his hand reach out to cup her elbow.

“Some of our people believe these things belonged to the Ancestors,” said Lian, speaking over Delyn’s sudden stammer. “However, they are not in the usual style of such items belonging to the Ancestors.”

“And you know the style of Ancient technology so well?” John asked as he reached the group. He _knew_ he’d been right to distrust the Noyian.

“We have seen the artistry of the Ancestors on other worlds - rooms and ruins that were once inhabited by them, items that are nothing more than fragments. These are not like them.”

“Oh, we’ve had quite a bit of experience with Ancient technology,” Rodney said, coming up beside John. “The Ancients built a lot of things in a variety of different styles - I mean, the language doesn’t seem to change, which the linguists find very interesting - but there seem to be several different styles to the devices they built, depending on the type of use that the device was for. Actually, it’s gotten to the point where we can determine what purpose--”

“Rodney, perhaps the lecture could wait until after we manage to look at the technology?” John turned to Lian, noting how the man looked flatly back at him. “Look,” he said. “We want to fight the Wraith. We’d like to stop them from attacking you and us and everyone else in this galaxy. In order to do that, we need weapons. If you have anything that might be Wraith or Ancient weaponry - even broken stuff - then we have people who can probably fix it so it works. And if they can’t...” he was tempted to say, ‘ _then they can blow up three-quarters of a solar system in the process._ ’ John let it pass this time. If the Noyians had been friendlier then he wouldn’t have hesitated to rag Rodney about it. Instead, he settled for saying, “If they can’t, then there’s probably no-one short of one of the Ancients who _can_ get it working.”

His last words were delivered to a crowd of Noyians, gathering around the group as John and Lian faced off against each other. And his words were making an impact on more than a few of the Noyians.

“Teyla?” Lian never took his eyes from John’s face.

“He speaks the truth,” Teyla said, her features in profile to John as she spoke. “I have allied with him and his people for that reason.” Her words carried, clear and strong through the growing crowd.

John was angry with Lian’s refusal to believe anything he said without first running it through Teyla. And, irrationally, even angrier with Teyla for catering to Lian’s paranoia at all - even if it did convince the man.

“We have both Wraith weapons and the technologies of the Ancestors,” said a new voice from the side. Umaya stepped out of the crowd, her eyes fixed on John.

“Umaya!”

The girl had balls; she stood up to the older man without flinching. “We have hoarded them for years, Lian. The Wraith weapons work against the Wraith - so you say, but the Ancestors’ devices are beyond our understanding - if you would only see it!”

“We can make them work,” he said, fiercely. “In time!”

“And we do not have time,” Umaya said, shortly. In spite of her youth, it seemed that the Noyians were listening to her - especially the younger ones. “We have spoken to many worlds, many cultures who tell us that the Wraith are coming - and have come - in far greater number than even the histories speak of. If John Sheppard and his people can make them work--”

“ _When_ ,” Rodney corrected her, apparently unable to stop himself.

Lian tore his gaze from Umaya. “So sure?”

“I _am_ a genius,” Rodney said with all the unconscious arrogance of which he was capable. “Even among my own people.”

“He’s pretty good,” said John, deciding that enough people had argued his case for him. “Look, we just want to take a look at this stuff. There’s no point in sitting on it if you can’t use it. And it might be that we can’t use it either, but it’s worth checking out.”

Lian looked at Teyla again. Then he looked at Umaya, then at the circle of people watching, and something in his face hardened. “Very well,” he said to John, his voice harsh sharp. “We will show you what devices we have kept through the years and if you can use it, we will trade.”

“Thanks.” John said, not without a touch of anger on his own part. “As Teyla will tell you, we play fair.” _She seems to be the only authority you trust._

The expression on the Noyian’s face was resentful, but after a moment, he nodded. “This way.” And with a touch on Teyla’s arm to draw her alongside him, Lian walked off, parting the people before him like the proverbial Moses.

Teyla glanced back at John once, her expression eloquent with more things than he could identify. Then she followed Lian.

And, with a glance at the Noyians surrounding them, so did John.

“Not exactly eager,” Ronon observed as they began making their way down the low end of the valley, towards the river.

“No,” John agreed, keeping his voice hushed. “Watch out for him.” He was only too aware of the Noyians who crowded around them, intent on following them to wherever the technology and devices were kept.

Ronon bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. “Already am.” Then he loped ahead to where Rodney was engaging Delyn in a discussion of exactly what kinds of technology the Noyians had kept.

“Can your friend truly make devices of the Ancestors work?” Umaya asked, sauntering up alongside John.

“With a lot of yelling, grumbling, and reminding people that he’s a genius,” he said. “Rodney’s _almost_ as good as he thinks he is.” He’d give the other man that.

“And you do not have his genius?”

That might be going a bit far. “I have a different sort of genius,” he said.

“Which would be...?” Umaya tilted her head to look up into his face.

“Oh...fighting. Being a warrior.” There wasn’t really a neat way to describe it, so that would have to do.

“John!” A hand tugged at his sidearm, and he looked down at Anneka, skipping beside him to keep up with his strides. “Are you going to see the devices?”

“Anneka, you’re supposed to be with Milla!” Umaya’s voice was exasperated.

John was seeing a pattern to the girl’s movements. He interrupted Anneka as she poked her head around his hip and opened her mouth to retort at Umaya. “Yes, we’re going to see the devices. Coming?”

Umaya’s sigh was clear enough, but Anneka’s face lit up. “Yes!” And, so saying, she held up her arms.

Carrying hadn’t been part of the deal, but John obliged - if only because the kid was charming enough.

“You should stay with Milla!” Umaya sulked.

“You challenged Lian!”

“That’s not something I should be doing and never do!” Umaya retorted.

John considered that a matter of opinion. “Ladies,” he said, looking from one to the other. “No arguing. You can tell me where you got these devices from.”

“On other worlds when we go through the Ring of the Ancestors,” Anneka said promptly.

“Mostly, we trade for them,” said Umaya. “Lian has an obsession with the Ancestors, and the devices are useless to all of us.” Another glance found its way towards John, clear and sharp. “You can make them work?”

“Sometimes.” There were some things that all the scientists in Atlantis and on Earth couldn’t work out, items that had no comprehensible reason, and devices that refused to divulge their secrets. “How do you get the ones you don’t trade for?”

“Those are mostly on uninhabited planets. We bring them back here and store them. Lian dreams of finding or training up someone among our people who can make them work.”

“I take it you don’t agree.”

“The Wraith have been hunting us as far back as anyone remembers,” the girl said. “And the Ancestors never did anything to stop them. We shouldn’t expect any help from them.”

“You shouldn’t talk about the Ancestors like that!” Anneka seemed horrified.

“Why not? It’s true,” said the older girl with all the stubborn confidence of an adolescent. “And Lian only makes it worse with his insistence that we could get the devices working. Devices run down over time - the Wraith weapons run out of energy after a time.”

Anneka drew breath to protest, and John interrupted. “The Ancients’ - Ancestors’ - devices still work.”

Both girls stared. “Really?” Anneka asked at the same time as Umaya inquired, “You have seen this?”

“Yes,” he said to both questions.

“Told you,” the little girl said.

Umaya just glared and stalked off ahead of them as they reached a narrow path that curved along a ledge leading up to a cave in the hills. Ronon glanced back, blinking in surprise as he saw the child John was carrying.

Not that John was going to carry her much longer. He didn’t want to overbalance as he made his way along the ledge - the river wasn’t more than a half-dozen yards below, but it would be cold and hitting it at that distance would hurt.

He set Anneka down, ignoring her whine. “I think this is as far as you’re being carried,” he told her. “Maybe you should go back--”

She made a face at that and promptly started up the shale-lined path after Umaya. _Okay. Not going back._ Absently, John wondered how he’d managed to end up as the babysitter when he was the team-leader.

It was a relief to discover that most of the villagers didn’t follow them up the ledge. When he looked back, a little surprised that there weren’t many footsteps following him, he saw them milling at the plateau from which the path veered off, watching him climb.

A couple of children were still following them, older than Anneka, younger than Umaya, but most of the locals seemed reluctant to hike up the path.

When John entered the cave, he realised why.

Someone had set up the cave like a museum of sorts - complete with dead Wraith fixed to the wall, their ugly faces dried in snarls of hatred. They weren’t any prettier dead then they were alive - and it was pretty disconcerting to glance up and look into the wizened face of an enemy who’d probably been dead longer than John had been living.

John didn’t know how the Wraith had been killed. Probably starved since the creature seemed otherwise unharmed. John didn’t like to think of how many people it would have taken to subdue a single Wraith - and there were maybe a dozen here, in various stages of mummification.

Lian, and Umaya held torches up, illuminating the darkness of the natural cavern, while Teyla had switched on her P-90 light. John did the same, the white beam cutting sharply through the darkness to rest one by one on the Wraith.

“You know, it’s just as well we had lunch before we came in here,” Rodney was saying to Delyn, who seemed unsurprised by the corpses. “Because this display is totally putting me off food.”

“And that takes some doing,” John muttered to himself.

By the torchlight, Ronon had an odd gleam in his eye - the glint of fanatical hatred that never stopped being off-putting to John or the other Atlantis personnel. They’d taken Ronon in, but sometimes, the depth of his hatred made them uncomfortable. At one level, John understood it; at another, he couldn’t imagine living with that kind of passion every moment of every day. “Why the display?”

“For remembrance,” Lian said. “And as a reminder.”

“A bit drastic, don’t you think?” John said, tearing his gaze away from a particularly malevolent-looking Wraith. If it wasn’t for the fact that the creature looked about as living as a 5,000 year-old mummy, he’d have been more than a little freaked by the way the corpse still seemed to watch him with something like avid hatred in its eyes.

His eye lighted on Teyla, standing with her body braced against the air, the light of her P-90 shining on the face of what looked like the most recently-interred Wraith. Something about the way she stood made John cross the room to touch her shoulder. She glanced at him with something like surprise, like someone coming awake after a deep sleep, and took a slow, quiet breath. “I am fine.”

“Just checking,” he murmured, before turning to address Lian. “So, where are these things you’ve collected?”

The Noyian was eyeing him warily, but he answered. “This way.”

In the inner cave, their footsteps echoed loudly, and the torches cast down a warm orange glow across the piles of weapons leaned against the walls. Dozens of stunners, neatly laid out in long rows; pistols lying in the sand, placed for easy counting; silvery ovoid detonators that winked wickedly in the lamplight...

A treasure trove of Wraith weapons, hoarded and kept for...what? A time when they could fight back?

John didn’t get it. If they had the weaponry, why not use it? And if they couldn’t use it, why had Khenar Lian been so secretive about them?

Then John realised that a faint bluish-green glow was creeping across the floor, casting his shadow before him, across the Wraith weapons.

He turned to the corner behind him and took a step forward.

Patterns both familiar and foreign danced with the internal light of Ancient design, a collection of weapons and devices and _things_ that glimmered and glittered and blazed in John’s presence, flaring as he reached out to trace his finger across a dark design. Behind the trail of his fingertip, designs glowed vividly. He couldn’t feel their response to him on his skin, but he could see it with his eyes.

And so could Lian and the other Noyians - Delyn, Umaya, Anneka and the other children who’d followed them into the cave.

John turned, smiling in spite of himself. There was nothing like a light display to get people’s attention. And Rodney was a lovely shade of green beneath the bluish light. He might be a genius, but John had the gene - naturally and far stronger than any of the artificially-induced genes.

Moments like these, John loved it.

“We’ll take it. All of it.”

  --

Of course, it wasn’t that simple.

“This isn’t going to be any use to you anyway,” Rodney was saying. “You can’t use it - none of your people have the gene.”

“Colonel Sheppard has a...natural ability with this technology,” Teyla added. “It is something that he and a few others can do. There are ways to simulate it--”

“But even that’s imperfect,” said Rodney. “Look, Sheppard was born able to do this stuff. He’s not the only one, but he’s pretty much the strongest carrier of it that we have. I’ve got the gene, but it’s artificial - we developed a retrovirus that-- Never mind. You wouldn’t understand my explanation - you hardly understand anything I’m saying right now! Just accept that we’ve got the people and the technology to be able to use this stuff. You don’t. It makes more sense for you to give this stuff to us--”

“Or trade it.”

Rodney was in full flow. Teyla’s correction barely registered in his tirade, although he adjusted his words with typical fluency. “Or trade it, although there are times when a lack of MasterCard in this universe makes the whole system of barter and exchange really inconvenient.”

“These things have belonged to my people for generations!”

“And how much have you used them? What is this? A museum? A mausoleum?”

Teyla didn’t exactly interrupt Rodney, but she did manage to get a verbal foot in the edge of the door. “Khenar Lian, your people have collected these for a long time - and yet they lie here unused.”

“We would have found a use for them, sooner or later,” Lian said. “If Colonel Sheppard possesses this ability--”

“Even among their people it is rare,” Teyla said. “Among our peoples it is unknown.” She glanced John’s way, then back at Lian. “Lian.” He turned to her, almost unable to deny her request. “Will you trade or give them to us?”

Lian stared at her for a long moment, then looked suspiciously at John.

“We will trade for them,” he said at last.

John was glad he’d decided to remain silent through all this. He’d nearly spoken out, more than once. A look from Teyla had silenced him, and in the end, he figured she knew what she was doing. He didn’t _like_ it, but she seemed to be the only person who could really get through to the stubborn son-of-a-bitch, and John had learned enough of the diplomatic stuff to recognise that sometimes Teyla or Ronon could bargain what he and Rodney couldn’t, simply because they were local to Pegasus.

Teyla looked to him, her expression questioning. He nodded at her and looked to Lian. “What’s your price?”

“What do you have to offer us?”

Okay, this was the point at which things usually went bad. What Atlantis could offer them wasn’t what the locals wanted, or what the locals wanted was something that Atlantis couldn’t procure.

As Rodney had noted, the lack of universal currency in the Pegasus system made things tricky.

Then again, Atlantis did ‘tricky’ first thing in the morning, even before they’d had a cup of coffee.

“We can’t offer you free rein with our stores,” John said after a moment. At the blank look on the Noyian’s face, and Teyla’s chiding look, he rephrased. “A free hand. Look, we’ve got medicines, some technological advancements - Teyla’s people have taken all kinds of stuff from us.”

Lian looked at Teyla.

“They have many concepts and ideas that my people have adopted, quite successfully.”

“Including warfare against the Wraith,” Ronon added, fingering a Wraith detonator before tossing it back into the pile. “We’ve got some experience with that.”

“I should have thought your people would have more experience against the Wraith,” Lian said.

Ronon stiffened briefly, then shrugged. “They’re dead. Sheppard’s people aren’t.”

John found himself the focus of the blond man’s gaze again. “A price cannot be set until I know what your people have to offer us,” he said.

“That works for us,” John replied, keeping his temper in the face of the other man’s supercilious behaviour. “I should report back to our base and run this by Elizabeth, anyway.”

“Umaya can accompany you,” Lian said, indicating the blonde girl, who brightened noticeably.

“That won’t be necessary,” said John, stepping in before anything more could be said. “Teyla and I can manage it.” It would give him the opportunity to speak with Teyla as they went along - there’d been time to speak with Rodney and Ronon since they met the Noyian leader, but more difficult to get Teyla alone when Lian was all over her.

“I had hoped Teyla might stay--” Lian looked hopefully at Teyla.

“Oh, Rodney and Ronon know everything there is to know about Atlantis,” John said, catching Teyla’s eye with a look that he hoped conveyed that he wanted a private word with her - without Khenar Lian or one of his people listening in. “They can fill you in on the details.”

“We will not be long,” Teyla said to the Noyian, acceding to John’s hint.

Lian looked from her to John with suspicion. John kept his expression friendly, ignoring the animosity in the Noyian’s gaze. The man had something they wanted, and for this tech, John could be polite. He was not, however, going to give up the talk with Teyla. Finally, the other man shrugged and turned away, striding from the cave full of the things his people had collected and which he would never be able to use.

After a wry, almost chiding look, Teyla followed him out. With a long, studying look at John, Umaya followed both of them.

John didn’t sigh, although he wanted to.

Great. Just what he needed; one native leader with an inferiority complex and a crush on John’s team-mate, and a room full of Ancient devices that depended on the native leader with the inferiority complex and the crush on John’s team-mate deciding he was going to let Atlantis have the devices.

John didn’t like his chances.

“Your friend will bring him around, Colonel Sheppard,” said the Noyian woman - Delyn. Her voice was light and soft in the echoing cavern. “Lian is accustomed to being...different. Special. He has long hoped that these devices might reveal secrets to destroying the Wraith.” Her pale eyes rested on John. “It is difficult for him, but when he has dealt with it, he will see sense.”

Difficult, whatever - John wasn’t feeling much sympathy for the Noyian leader. But he nodded for Delyn’s benefit and it seemed to be enough. She turned to Ronon, who was examining some of the Wraith weaponry, and they started up a soft conversation that echoed through the room, her lighter voice against Ronon’s heavier one.

Rodney had already begun inspecting the stash. Several of the children were inspecting him, while others were brushing their fingers along the device patterns, frowning when it became apparent that what John had done didn’t work for them.

“Anything?” John asked his friend.

“Lots of things,” Rodney said. “You know, this looks like one of the devices that we’ve been working on back home...”

“You’ll have time to explore later. I think we should join Teyla and Lian outside for the moment, don’t you?”

It took a while to collect everyone - there was no way that John was leaving the kids behind to get lost or start playing war-games with the weapons. For the most part, they whined but went - even Anneka, with whom John had expected to have the most trouble.

When they emerged into the daylight again, John noticed that Lian was talking with Teyla, his voice low and his tone urgent. She listened, but shook her head, and gave her reply in equally soft tones. The Noyian’s expression closed up and his eyes narrowed, but he said nothing otherwise as Teyla walked away from him to where John was speaking quietly with Rodney.

“Why do I get stuck with the job of chaperoning Romeo?” Rodney glared in the direction of Ronon who was chatting with apparent ease to Delyn.

“Nobody said you had to chaperone him.”

Rodney looked as though he’d swallowed a lemon - figuratively, not literally. “Oh, and who is it who’s going to put a finger wrong and get us all into trouble?”

Privately, John didn’t think it was going to be _Ronon_ who put a finger wrong. For all his hatred of the Wraith, Ronon could be pretty circumspect about relationships; John had heard of at least two women in Atlantis who’d attempted to flirt with Ronon and been met with the same politeness Teyla used on unwanted admirers.

Say what you like about Pegasus locals, but they conducted their affairs with as much discretion as any diplomat could wish.

“You could always take the hike back up the hill,” John told him as Teyla came up to them. The prospect of a hike to the jumper and back quenched Rodney’s complaints. “Look, just take a wander around, see if Lian pumps you for any kind of information, keep an eye on Ronon...make friends.” When Rodney opened his mouth to protest again, John gave the other man a look. “ _Try_ to make friends. And keep your eyes open.”

With an indistinguishable grumble to himself, Rodney stalked off and was soon accosted by one of the locals, asking questions that the scientist obviously found worth answering - he began talking a mile a minute.

Teyla moved into the periphery of his vision, her hands resting on her P-90. “He will find someone to ask the questions he wishes to answer.”

“He always does,” John muttered to himself. Then he turned to her, noting that Lian wasn’t anywhere to be seen. It was a nice change. “Ready to go?”

They walked back through the camp, more or less side by side. As they did, John noted the whispers that followed them through the camp, the fingers surreptitiously pointed at him. It looked like the kids had spread the word about John and the Ancient devices through the camp when they left the cave - certainly there were enough people watching them wide-eyed.

“I feel like a goldfish in a bowl,” he muttered as a group of Noyians eyed him, male and female both. It was different to their entry into the camp: that had been curiosity; this was awe.

“The Ancestors are a legend to our peoples,” Teyla said, her mouth curving in a faint grin. “The tales of what they could do, the promise of their protection - they are stories told to children. In the cave - what the children saw is like something from their stories. A legend walks among them.” Her gaze rested on him with an amusement and affection, and John felt his cheeks heat a little.

“So...do your people look at me like that?”

“No,” she said frankly. “Perhaps they did once, but time and familiarity has eroded that reverence. You are just ‘John Sheppard’ to them.” They were passing through the outskirts of the camp, past the pegs holding up the outermost tents.

For the most part, John was glad to be out of the camp. He could still feel the people watching them as they began up the trail out of the valley, but the gazes were distant, and he could only hear the general murmur of conversation, no specific words.

“You know,” he said as they hiked up the pass, “I never thought I wouldn’t want to be a legend.”

“But it is difficult with every eye upon you?” Teyla glanced back at him with a smile before she continued up the trail. “Lian finds it similarly difficult.”

John grimaced, relieved that she couldn’t see his expression. But all he said was, “Oh?”

At the next turn, he found Teyla waiting, watching him. “You do not like Lian.”

It wasn’t a question.

There were a lot of things John could say and quite a few things he didn’t think would be such a good idea to say. He settled for, “Does it show?”

Teyla didn’t do exasperated the way some women did - with the change of expression that let a man know he was in the doghouse. However, John was familiar with Teyla in all her moods and states of mind, and this was definitely ‘exasperated’. “Look, Teyla, I just don’t trust him. He’s been friendly and suspicious by turns from the moment we met him.”

“He seemed charming enough to me.”

“To you,” John said, irked to remember the Noyian’s solicitousness towards Teyla. “That whole business with the cave? He couldn’t use the Ancient devices and his people aren’t doing anything about the Wraith. So why are they stockpiling weapons?”

“For the same reason that Dr. McKay inquires after the technology of all the cultures we encounter,” Teyla replied. “Because he has a passion for such things.”

“But at least McKay can get those things to work - some of them, anyway,” he modified. “Khenar Lian doesn’t have a hope of working any of the Ancient devices--”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, fixing him with something close to anger. “Is your dislike simply because he was reluctant to hand the devices over?”

“No.”

“Then why are you so set against him?”

“Why are you so keen on him?”

She paused. “Have you ever met someone with whom you felt...familiar. As though you had known them in another time, from another life?”

There was an uncomfortable twist in his gut. “You believe in reincarnation?”

“I do not know,” Teyla said after a moment. “But Lian is...familiar. Watching him is like watching a reflection of myself.”

“Like he’s a part of your soul?” John made the words pointed, and she flushed.

“Like we are kindred.”

In a way, her answer was worse than if she’d admitted to being in love with the guy. But at least John could work with this whole ‘kindred’ thing - the Noyians _were_ a lot like the Athosians, and Teyla hadn’t been among her people in a while.

He turned and touched her shoulder, a short, fierce grip. “Teyla, I know you like these guys. They’re familiar - like your own people, but bigger, more peaceful. That still doesn’t mean you automatically trust them.”

“And yet you dismiss them so easily for being as suspicious of you as you have been of others,” Teyla responded, her voice turning cool and clipped.

The anger rose in him at her tone of voice, unexpected and unwelcome. “Look, Teyla, I don’t like Lian. I don’t like the way he behaves towards you - as though he owns you; I don’t like the way he views Atlantis - as though _we’re_ the bad guys in the galaxy and not the Wraith. I don’t like his attitude towards us and I don’t like _him_.” John turned on his heel and began up the slope again, silently fuming at her accusation and half-wondering why he was so annoyed by Teyla’s defence of Lian.

It wasn’t the first time they’d disagreed on the intentions of the people they met while going through the Stargate - but it was the first time John had felt it so personally.

The ironic part was that, out of all his team, John most trusted Teyla’s instincts when it came to summing up locals. Rodney could be trumped by technology or the lack of it, and Ronon tended to judge societies by their military strength and willingness to fight the Wraith, but Teyla was rarely wrong.

And when she was - such as in the case of the Gennii - it was fairly spectacular.

He toiled up the trail, hardly caring if Teyla came after him or not.

Of course she did. After another couple of legs up the switchback trail, John could hear the steady tread of her boots on the rough soil and sand of the path. But it wasn’t until they were at the top of the climb when she touched his arm and spoke.

“John.”

He would have stopped, even without her restraining hand. Teyla almost never used his name, even when they were off-duty.

“Teyla.”

“I understand that you do not like Lian,” she said. “But I do not believe that you understand _me_ : I see nothing in his behaviour or demeanour that we have not seen before. He is not positive towards Atlantis, but he does not know what I know - he has not seen what I have seen of you or what you are doing to stop the Wraith. Lian only knows this planet and the others with whom his people trade. He has only lived this life and it is all he has.”

It didn’t make much difference to John. He still didn’t like Lian and he doubted he ever would, whatever the circumstances. Some things went deeper than mere knowledge.

But he wasn’t going to say all that to Teyla.

“He could be friendlier.”

Teyla gave him a reproving look as they began descending the other side of the hill, headed for where they’d left the ‘jumper. John returned a wry smile and figured they were okay.

Although he still had questions for her.

He didn’t ask until they were nearly at the bottom of the valley, pushing through the bushes that clustered in the low areas. She held back a branch so it wouldn’t slap in his face as she moved ahead of him and he took that moment of physical proximity to ask, “Do you miss your people?”

Her expression changed subtly, from resolute to astonished as he passed her, and she let the branch whip back on thin air. “I... There are times when I wish to be among people I know and trust,” she said, moving up beside him. “However, there is no lack of opportunity to visit them.”

“And you don’t know or trust us?”

Teyla hesitated, and John stifled the sudden urge to shake her. Dammit, she’d been a part of his team for over a year now. It wasn’t as though it was the first few months when suspicion dogged her and her people every time they turned around. “It is not--” She started again. “You are my friends,” she said. “But there are times when you are as strange to me as the Wraith were to you when you first arrived in Pegasus.”

Okay, John could understand that. It didn’t make things entirely better. “You can count on us, Teyla.”

“I would not remain with you in Atlantis if I could not,” she replied.

John could feel a ‘but’ coming along and said as much.

“Being here has reminded me of my own people,” she said at last. “I have felt...at home here. As though I had never left Athos.”

He didn’t think he’d like the answer, but he asked the question anyway. “Do you ever wish you’d never met us?”

“No.” That answer was immediate, at least. “Colonel, you have brought my people hope - that is something that we treasure. Only--”

Here it came. “Only what?”

“I do not belong to your world,” she met his gaze with a hint of resignation. “Neither do I belong among my people. It is...different now. Since the siege against Atlantis, I see them less, and when I go to the mainland, it is only a visit, never a return home.”

Displacement. John knew the feeling well. Before Atlantis, it had been years since he’d had somewhere to call ‘home’; since Atlantis...well, everything had changed after he’d come to Pegasus.

“You know,” he said, “there’s a saying back on Earth: Home is where the heart is.” John caught the eyebrow she arched at him. “Okay, so it’s a tacky saying. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be true, too.”

Teyla sighed and touched his sleeve again, halting him. “I trust you - and Rodney and Ronon - with my life, Colonel. There...there are few people with whom I have been more comfortable. As your proverb says, I am closer to being ‘home’ with you and the others I have met in Atlantis than I have been since Athos.”

“But it’s not Athos.”

“No,” she replied. “It is not Athos.”

No surprise there.

“Is that enough?” Her question had enough asperity to make it pretty clear she didn’t feel the need for this conversation the way John did.

“I dunno,” he said. “Is it?”

She rolled her eyes and they kept walking. The topic was left by the wayside.

They reached the ‘jumper a little while later, and John took the pilot’s chair as Teyla strapped herself into the passenger seat. “We’ll do a fly-by past the Stargate,” he told her. “Then set the ‘jumper down cloaked nearer the camp.”

Her smile was light, “Rodney will be relieved not to walk the distance.”

“My ears will be relieved not to have to listen to him complain,” said John, lifting the ‘jumper up in the glade where they’d parked it and weaving them through the wide-spaced tree trunks, just for the hell of it.

Teyla looked sideways at him as he did so, and he glanced at her, grinning. Rodney had a tendency to protest when he tried this, and Ronon didn’t understand the pleasure of such manoeuvring. Then again, Ronon had never been a pilot.

Neither had Teyla, but there was something in her expression - in the way her hands flexed on the sides of her chair, in the glimmer of excitement in her eyes - that said she enjoyed the thrill of this flying almost as much as John did.

They hovered before the Stargate, at the top of a hill overlooking a lake, while Teyla dialled Atlantis.

On the other end of the channel, Elizabeth sounded a little harried as they related to her the details of the Noyians and their hoard. “And the Noyians have collected Ancient technology?”

“Hoarded quite a bit of it,” John said. “The leader’s reluctant to trade, but Teyla think he can be brought around.” He glanced at Teyla.

“His people are very similar to my own,” she said, staring out the windscreen at the open Stargate as though she could see through to Atlantis. “They would most likely welcome the medicines and items that you provide mine, have you any to spare.”

John watched her face as she spoke, the austere serenity that she’d learned through years of living under threat of the Wraith. He found himself watching her sometimes, in quiet moments when there wasn’t anything else to take his attention. She didn’t seem to mind, and it was better than staring at Rodney or Ronon; not that there was anything wrong with the guys, just that...they were guys.

And Teyla was definitely easy on the eyes. That wasn’t the sum total of her, but it damn sure helped.

“We can bring in more from Earth if they need more medicine,” Elizabeth was saying. “That’s easy enough. And not as difficult to trade as weapons or explosives.”

The intonation of her words caught John’s attention. “That was once,” he defended, glancing at Teyla, as though he could take her to task for Elizabeth’s comment.

“And we all remember that once,” said Elizabeth, her voice more wry than might be expected of a woman who’d spent several hours at gunpoint as a result of the Gennii covetousness. “All right. Has Rodney taken an inventory of the Ancient devices yet?”

“Not yet,” John said. “We left him and Ronon at it.”

There was a pause. Then, “You left Rodney and Ronon alone in a camp with a leader who’s reluctant to trade?”

“Yes.” He sounded defensive and knew it. It only made him more defensive.

Another pause. “Okay, then. So you’ll be back sometime in the next ten hours?”

“Assuming all goes well.”

“Assuming.” Again, the dry note to her voice. “Try to get those devices - and the Wraith weapons if you can. We acquired a lot of them in the siege, but seem to have been losing them since.”

“Gotcha. ‘Jumper One out.”

“Atlantis out.”

John nodded at Teyla, who pressed the ‘reset’ button on the console and the Stargate shut down, closing the connection with Atlantis. He leaned back in his chair, leaving the ‘jumper hovering. “Do you really think Khenar Lian will trade those devices for medicine?”

“They are of no use to him,” Teyla said, turning in the chair so she was facing him across the dialling console. “He showed a great interest in the advances of your people and how they have helped mine.”

“Yeah, but he wasn’t all that eager to have us find out about the devices,” John pointed out. The phrase that came to mind was ‘dog in the manger’, but he wasn’t going to say that to Teyla. “Look,” he said, seeing her expression, “you know I don’t like him and I don’t trust him.”

“I am sure he returns the sentiment.”

John closed one of his hands into a fist and sat up, pulling up the console display as a distraction. “Oh, he does. Believe me, he does.” He began plotting their course back to the camp, using the ‘jumper’s natural navigation capabilities to scope out the lay of the Noyian planet.

Arguing about this was going to get them nowhere, and while he didn’t like Lian, it was a personal thing, not a professional thing - yet.

Sometimes...you just didn’t get along with people. That was he and Lian. The fact that the Noyian was practically chatting up Teyla was incidental. Really.

But when he glanced up, Teyla was watching him.

“What?”

“Lian will treat you as you treat him,” she said. “He is...sensitive to such things.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed it,” John muttered, looking back at the navigational screen that had popped up over the dashboard. He got another look for that comment, but at least she wasn’t using his name the way she did Ronon’s. There were times when John wondered who’d died and made Teyla Ronon’s mom. “Okay, I’ll be nice.”

“Be more than nice and he is likely to allow you to take the devices.”

Okay, now _that_ sounded like his mom chiding him. “I’ll remember that.” The bird’s-eye view on the nav screen had changed to a topographical chart, side on, showing the terrain they’d be flying through, complete with overlying forest and a site that wasn’t too far from the lip of the valley. “You know,” he said to Teyla as they lifted off, “the Ancients might not have been able to defeat the Wraith, but they sure knew how to make some pretty cool stuff!”

She settled back in her seat with a smile. John grinned to himself as he set the ‘jumper of with a thought. The situation was never so bad when you could make an attractive woman laugh.

They headed back to the Noyian camp in amicable quiet.

 --

“Sheppard.” Ronon caught up with John as he was leaving Milla’s tent. “Enjoying yourself?” There was a knowing smirk to the other man’s features that made John want to smack him.

Upon returning to the camp, Lian had promptly spirited Teyla away, and all John’s enquiries as to their whereabouts had been met with distractions and hedging. He was a little worried in spite of knowing she was more than capable of looking after herself. It was just that John would have liked to keep an eye on Teyla after all the attention Lian had been paying her this morning. Just in case.

Rodney was back in the cave, mentally cataloguing the Ancient finds with two Noyian women who fawned all over him. John told Rodney that they were good to trade, and Rodney nodded and promptly turned his attention back to the women. John hovered around for a while, but Teyla and Lian’s absence began getting on his nerves - and he hadn’t seen Ronon for a while.

Once John got out of the caves, the redoubtable Anneka accosted him, and he’d promptly been dragged off to Milla’s tent. Anneka had chattered on and asked all manner of questions, but Milla had offered him refreshments - food, drink, and, quite blatantly, herself.

John made his exit with as much speed as was polite; and blew out a long, relieved breath when he finally managed to extract himself from the uncomfortable scenario.

“I’ve spent more pleasant afternoons,” he told Ronon dryly.

Ronon fell into step beside him, the long legs measuring John’s pace. “The women here are...direct.”

John eyed him. “Did Delyn try seducing you?”

A grin, slightly wolfish. “She tried.”

With most guys on the expedition, John wouldn’t even think of asking. This was Ronon. “Did you--?”

The dark eyes gleamed. “Don’t you have the saying, ‘a gentleman never tells’?” The smirk died a little as they moved out from between the tents into a large, grassy area that sloped up into the hills, only to turn scrubby and rocky as it reached a jagged edge of the underlying rocks of the hills. “They’d welcome new blood in their tribe though.”

John began heading for a vantage point a little up on the hill. Maybe he could spot Teyla and Lian from higher up. He’d tried her radio earlier, but it was turned off.

And Ronon’s words weren’t helping his state of mind at all.

“We’re not here to sleep our way through the camp,” John said, aiming for severe. Not that he could entirely blame Ronon; Delyn seemed nice, and Ronon had been on the run for seven years. That probably didn’t mean much time for the finer things in life.

Most of the women in Atlantis regarded Ronon with no small amount of apprehension, although a couple had shown some interest. The chief exception was Teyla who seemed to enjoy his company, although John was pretty sure nothing was happening between his team-mates. And Teyla seemed to enjoy John’s company, too, and she hadn’t made any moves on him yet.

“Maybe not,” Ronon said, and there was a note of seriousness as he climbed up on one of the rocks, his dreadlocks swinging free about his face. “But Lian has.” At John’s look, he shrugged. “He’s got about twenty children by various women of the camp.”

John did a double take. “Twenty?” Lian couldn’t have been more than thirty. Thirty-five at the oldest. Of course, a guy could have several women pregnant at once, but still...

And Rodney thought _John’s_ flirting counted as ‘kirking’.

“They weren’t exaggerating?”

“No.” Ronon leaned back against a stony outcropping, folding his arms across his chest. “They said we’d better keep an eye on Teyla.”

Great. That was just _wonderful._ John hadn’t been worried before. He was now. “And you’re telling me this _now_?”

His reply was a shrug of broad, muscled shoulders. “Teyla can look after herself.”

John might have thought the same if he hadn’t had the conversation with Teyla about how she didn’t belong in Atlantis, or heard her admission of feeling comfortable with Lian.

The Noyian would have Teyla over John’s dead body because the thought of Lian and Teyla was all kinds of wrong and bad.

For starters, John would lose his team-mate.

“You’d hope so,” John muttered.

“She’s never been turned by a pretty face before.”

“There’s always a first time.”

Ronon didn’t hide his surprise. “You really don’t trust him.”

“Let’s just say I’m withholding judgement,” John said, surveying the camp. “See any sign of Teyla?”

The other man shaded his eyes against the light. His higher vantage point meant the sun caught the top of his head as it moved slowly into the west. “No. But McKay’s finally come out of the caves.”

John watched the tiny figure stump down the path from the caves and flicked his radio on. “I see you’ve dragged yourself away from Tutankhamen’s tomb?”

“Oh, very funny, Sheppard. Yes, I figured I hadn’t heard from any of you in a while and should come and check that you didn’t need saving.”

Ronon’s snort probably wasn’t loud enough to carry to Rodney’s ears, but John heard it clear enough.

“Anything interesting?”

“Well, we won’t know until we get them back to the labs, but there are some interesting possibilities. One of them looks like a variant of the personal shield that I activated the first week we were in the city--”

“The one that we had to drain before you could take it off?”

“Except that this one looks like it has an off-button!” Rodney said, never missing a beat. “At least, that’s what it looks like. Although the design is slightly different--”

John didn’t quite roll his eyes. He just interrupted before Rodney could get any further. “Do you have any idea where Teyla is?”

There was a pause. “Probably with Lian. Anyway, as I was saying--”

“Are the girls still with you?”

Another pause. “Yes. But why would you--”

“Ask them if Lian has any spots he likes to go. Scenic places. Somewhere he’d take Teyla.”

John saw Ronon’s expression and ignored it.

“You know,” Rodney said after a moment, “if he wanted to take Teyla somewhere private then he probably doesn’t want to be interrupt--”

“Just ask,” said John. He wasn’t going to stand around waiting for Teyla to turn up any longer. And she was a big girl and well able to take care of herself, but Lian was the father of some twenty kids and a man didn’t manage to get around like that in a community this size without having some serious charm.

A minute or so later, Rodney’s voice came through the radio. “Apparently there’s a trail through the western side of the valley that leads to one of the hunting grounds for _hireni_... Sharen says there are vantage points...” There was some background discussion transmitted through the radio, and John spent the time studying the western face of the valley, looking for anything that might indicate trails. Then, after a few seconds, Rodney was back on again. “The girls think that Lian might have taken Teyla to see the _hireni_. She was interested, if you recall.”

“Thanks, Rodney.”

It was difficult to see the western face of the valley; trees and shrubs obscured it - as well as the tents that were pitched all the way up to where the gradient of the slopes became too steep - but John thought he could make out a trail. At the least, it would be somewhere to start looking.

But the other man wasn’t finished with John. “Look, if you interrupt Teyla’s tryst with someone she’s going to be really mad. As in, probably worse than those days when she’s got the you-know happening and even Ronon won’t fight her.”

“Rodney, she’s not having a tryst with anyone,” John said shortly, his eyes narrowed as he moved to the right, the better to see the line of the trees. “She’s just been missing for the last...” he checked his watch, “hour and a half and I don’t like it when members of my team go missing.”

“You know, they’ll probably turn up for dinner or something.”

Rodney really wasn’t getting it. John gave up.

“Leave your radio on, okay? I want to be able to contact you.” He glanced at Ronon. “And do some socialising. Preferably without flirting.”

“Oh, and like you’re one to talk,” came the scoff from the other end.

“Converse with people,” John said. “I want to know more about these people - what they might want or need that we can trade them for those devices. I’m going looking for Teyla.”

Ronon scrambled down beside John. “You think she’s in trouble?”

‘In trouble’ wasn’t the phrase John would have used, but it would do. “I think I’m going to go looking for her,” was all he said. “Keep an eye on Rodney and try not to climb into the beds of any of the women.”

The grin Ronon gave him was decidedly discouraging on that front.

John strode off, heading back through the village as he tried to work out which of the branching paths from the main thoroughfare might lead to the western slope. It was hard to tell. As he’d discovered when he reached the bottom of the entry trail behind Anneka, once off the wide main track that zigzagged its way through the encampment, the paths seemed to wind without any particular direction or determination. They looped around themselves, wending between tents of vastly differing purposes, and past people doing everything from food preparation to sleeping.

“You’re looking for Lian.” Umaya slipped out of nowhere, falling into step beside John.

“Actually, I’m looking for my team-mate,” he said. “Who’s probably with Lian.”

The girl eyed him at the distinction. “Do you know where you’re going?”

He was going to take that in the non-metaphorical sense. “Vantage points in the _hireni_ hunting ground.”

Dark eyes gleamed with laughter. “You have good sources.” Her hand slipped into his, drawing him off along one of the side paths. “This way.”

John let her lead him into the side path, then took his hand back under pretext of checking his watch. After Milla - and the warning about Lian - he was more than a little wary of any of the Noyian women.

After a couple of tents, the track led them up into the tree line, not quite a switchback trail, but steep enough. “Did your people agree to trade?”

“Actually, they did. Once we figure out what you want and whether we can provide it, we’ll be more than happy to give it to you.”

Umaya’s glance was amused. “The devices mean so much to your people then?”

“We wouldn’t have agreed to trade if they didn’t,” John pointed out. “Why haven’t your people ever used the weapons against the Wraith?”

“The Wraith have not come to this planet in years - not since I was a child.”

John refrained from pointing out that, by his standards, Umaya was _still_ a child. It was the sort of thing teenagers tended to take badly on Earth, and he didn’t imagine that things were that different in Pegasus. “So, you missed out on the recent cullings through the galaxy?”

She shrugged, scrambling up what looked like a vertical rock face and reaching down to help him up. “We heard about them when we went trading,” she said. “But they did not come here.” John dug his toes into small clefts in the rock and levered himself up without taking the proffered hand.

“And they haven’t been here in years?” That was _very_ unusual.

Umaya shrugged, apparently unbothered by his refusal to touch her. “We have been in this camp for the last five years and the Wraith have not come for us.” The look she gave him was confiding, “We consider it better not to question.”

Not a mentality John had ever adopted.

“Rodney said that you came from a place where there are no Wraith.”

Wondering what else Rodney had absently said, John confined himself to saying, “Yeah.” The climb was tiring him, too. This side of the valley might be less steep than the main entrance, but the path went straight up, and he wasn’t twenty any more. Or even thirty.

Umaya wasn’t even twenty. And the girl was probably part mountain goat given that she was climbing this path like she’d been born to it.

John paused to take a breather. Between three trips from the ‘jumper to the campsite, various wanderings through the camp, and a long day, he was just a little on the tired side. Besides, Rodney wasn’t here to rag him about being unfit, and Ronon wasn’t here to smirk with the superior fitness provided by seven years living on his own; John could take a break.

If Umaya had been, say, Teyla’s age, then he probably would have pressed on out of pride, determined to do what she could. He didn’t remember what it was like to be a teenager anymore, but he was pretty sure he’d had about as much energy as Umaya - if not more. Exactly _what_ he spent that energy on had been a point of contention between him and the old man.

But that was long ago.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m not as young as I was,” he said. On one hand, his pride resented even the suggestion that he was ‘old’; John was in the prime of his life with an expectation of another forty years...assuming he survived Pegasus, the Wraith, and dealing with Rodney McKay and all the attendant trouble therein.

The girl smiled, transforming her face. If she was stunning when she was severe and serious, she was breathtaking when she laughed. “You’re not that old.”

“I’m at least twice your age.”

Umaya shrugged, still smiling. “Lian’s twice my age, and he has no trouble with this.”

John pushed off immediately. Never mind that the Noyian man was used to this kind of terrain. Humility took you so far, but few things beat pride as a goad. He ignored the girl’s smile as he indicated the trail. “So how far is it to these vantage points?”

“Oh, not far. Once we reach the top I can run there and not be winded.”

He didn’t note that she was young enough to run _anywhere_ and not be winded. “Great,” he muttered.

“It is not long to the top,” said Umaya. “See?” She pointed to a cleft between the rocks that seemed forever away. John peered up and sighed, but climbed in silence the rest of the way.

At the top, the terrain looked less scrubby than it did up the path he and his team had arrived at earlier today, running through the thick of the forest that began at the base of the hill he and Umaya had just climbed. It didn’t look like a hunting ground of any description. “And you hunt the _hireni_ through this?”

She glanced up at him, apparently pleased by his disbelief. “It is a challenge of skill.”

“I’ll say,” he muttered as they started off through the undergrowth. The leaf canopy overhead made it more or less permanently shady on the forest floor, but a lot of plants were growing down here anyway. Hunting anything through here with bow and arrow - or spear and knife - would be pretty dangerous; close quarters, if nothing else.

He’d have to ask Teyla what a _hireni_ was like, when he found her. John was imagining a deer, but she’d mentioned that most people hunted them in armour, which suggested that they weren’t easy kills.

“I hunted the _hireni_ two seasons ago,” Umaya said, in a tone of voice that implied it had been a big thing for her. “And brought down a buck without injury.”

“Sounds impressive,” said John. “So you’re an adult now by your standards?”

She frowned. “Would I not be considered adult in the way of your people?”

“We assign legal adulthood by physical age,” John said. “So, when you’re eighteen, you’re legal for most things except buying alcohol.”

“Most things?”

“Uh... You can own property. Vote - although not many people do that. Get married without your parents’ permission...”

Umaya shrugged. “Here, once you are capable of sustaining your own household through your own hunting, you are adult.”

“Teyla’s people work the same way,” John said.

“I am adult by our standards,” said Umaya. “I am permitted to have my own household, choose my own partners, bear children.”

“Uhuh.”

“You disagree, Colonel?”

He stopped in the middle of the forest. “Your friend, Milla? Pretty much issued me with an invitation to her bed this afternoon. I just don’t consider her ‘adult’.”

The girl looked nonplussed. “That is Milla. I would not be so forward.”

Well, at least they’d gotten this far. “Look,” John said, striving for ‘reasonable’. “Not to be dismissive - you might be an adult among your people, but you’re definitely not one among mine. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that I didn’t come here for this.”

He left out exactly what ‘this’ entailed. Because the girl was pretty, but that was as far as it went. John’s ego was pleased that he still ‘had it’ but his common sense was pointing out all the reasons that even flirting with a teenaged local was a bad idea - from the fact that he really _wasn’t_ here to get laid, to the fact that he was old enough to have been her father.

“So what did you come here for?”

“To this planet? To trade. Make friends.” John indicated the forest. “Right now, I’m trying to find my team-mate.”

“Are you worried that Lian might seduce her? _She_ is clearly adult - even by your standards.” The note of jealousy in her voice surprised him.

“Teyla’s been gone for two hours,” he said flatly. “I’m worried about her.”

“You said she was not bonded.”

“She isn’t.”

“Then is she not capable of looking after herself?”

He ignored the gut-deep revulsion he felt at the thought of Teyla and the Noyian man. “It’s not a matter of capability. It’s a matter of responsibility.”

“And you are responsible for her.”

“I’m responsible for all my team.”

“Yet you are not as concerned for either Dr. McKay or Ronon Dex.”

“Because I’ve seen them in the last half-hour.” _And neither of them have been spirited away by a guy that’s fathered twenty children in the last fifteen years._

“If your friend welcomes Lian’s attention--”

“Look,” John said. “All I want is to find my team-mate, bargain the price of those devices with your leader, and get my people home before midnight. It’s been a long day.”

Umaya turned as he walked past her. He could feel her gaze on him, pinning him between the shoulder blades as she called after him, “You will not find them.”

Frustrated by both the conversation and the reminder of Teyla’s continued absence, and more than a little irked by the girl’s stubbornness, John turned on his heel. “Then why don’t you help me?”

Somewhere above them, there was a rustle in the leaves as some creature made its way from bough to bough. “I will,” Umaya said in the silence. “But you are going the wrong way.”

Yeah, that would figure.

They trudged on for a few minutes, with Umaya dividing her attention between the trail and him.

John ignored her as much as possible. He was angry - at her pointed comments about Teyla, at himself for letting Teyla out of his sight for so long, at Teyla for not thinking he’d be worried about her gone for so long.

“You would not even consider--?”

“No.” It came out harsher than he’d intended and he stopped. “Look, you’re pretty - I’m sure there are heaps of guys who’d be interested in you--”

Her about-face was graceful and unexpected. John blinked as he found himself nearly lip-to-lip with her as she held the webbing of his flak jacket, preventing him from moving away without shoving her off. “But you are not.”

He’d reared back when he found her face so close to hers. “Umaya--”

“Would you say _her_ name with more tenderness?” She asked pointedly, her eyes searching his face. Her eyelashes were long and thick, the same shade as her hair in the dappled afternoon light, but the look in them was definitely not childlike.

 _Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned._

“John?”

“Teyla.” When he turned his head, she and Lian stood only a few yards away, her expression querying the pose in which they’d found him with Umaya. John didn’t quite sigh in relief, but he did relax a little. He’d have to thank her later for the timely interruption. Even if the sight of Lian’s arched brow from behind her shoulder was as unwelcome as ever. “We were just looking for you.”

“And you have found us,” Lian said. “Or, rather, we seem to have found you.” The pale eyes moved from John to Umaya, who still hadn’t quite let go of his jacket, although at least she wasn’t pressed up against him anymore.

“There was no need to come looking for us, Colonel,” said Teyla, moving around them, as though she would walk on and leave him to Umaya’s untender mercy. “We were just returning for the evening meal.”

“Good,” he said, gently disengaging Umaya’s hands from his jacket and not looking at the girl. “We’ll return with you.”

The walk back was longer than John remembered, tense with things that nobody was going to say as long as they had an audience.

For the most part, he focused on his team-mate. Teyla seemed annoyed with him, and John didn’t know why. He’d come after her when she’d gone missing, hadn’t he? And she was the one who’d been _incommunicado_ for the last couple of hours. He was just looking out for his team.

Okay, so he was looking out for his team and keeping an eye on Teyla. Because it was one thing to get friendly with the locals, but another to get friendly with a local known for his philandering ways.

They entered the camp without fanfare, and John touched her arm before she could walk away again. “We need to talk.” He smiled politely at both Lian and Umaya, “Privately.”

Teyla didn’t protest, but she didn’t say anything to John until they were on the grassy slope above the camp. “Were you truly worried, or did you not trust me with Lian?”

The words were more acid than he was used to hearing from her. John scowled. “I was worried!”

“And you do not trust Lian.”

“Strangely enough, I don’t - especially not when he spirits you off for two hours without so much as a ‘we’re going exploring, back in a couple of hours’.”

“Do you not consider me capable of looking after myself, Colonel?”

“On a planet with people who we know and who are our allies, I have _no_ problem,” John said with pointed emphasis. “On a planet with people who we only just met this morning and who we found hiding things from us, I think that’s a reasonable cause for concern.” He rested his hands on his hips, irked that _she_ was annoyed with _him_ after he’d fretted over her and her whereabouts. Behind her, he could see Rodney and Ronon climbing the hill to join them - hopefully with some information about what they could trade for those devices before getting the hell off this planet.

John wanted out of here. The sooner, the better.

“Lian is harmless. He merely wished to speak of the challenges of leading his people with someone who understood.”

“And he had to show you his ‘ _hireni_ hunting ground’ to do it?”

She frowned, tilting her head in pointed focus. “I asked him to.”

The innuendo passed right by her. John wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not. On one hand, she seemed unaware that the Noyian was trying to get into her pants; on the other, she was missing the point.

“Teyla, the point isn’t that you went off with him,” even if John wasn’t happy about the amount of time they were spending together - or her friendly response to Lian’s overtures, “the point is that it was two hours with your radio turned off! If something had happened, we wouldn’t have had any way to get in contact with you!”

Automatically, Teyla reached for the radio on her shoulder strap. Her finger brushed along the edge of it, checking the switch that turned it on or off. “I am sorry, Colonel,” she said then, apologetic. “I did not know that it was off.” Her expression hardened. “It was still no cause for you to come looking for me.”

He blew out a harsh breath as Ronon reached them. “Did you find out anything that they’d be willing to trade for those devices?”

“Ronon.”

“Teyla.” He turned to John. “You asking me or her?”

“Anyone who’s got an answer.”

“Well, I know something that you don’t know,” Rodney said as he toiled up the last bit and huffed out a long breath.

“Care to share it with the class, then?”

“Someone got out of the wrong side of bed this morning,” retorted his team-mate. “Or maybe just the wrong bed?”

“Rodney--”

“Did you know that Lian is considered ‘gifted’ among his people? That he’s been known to be able to tell when the Wraith are near?”

He was looking at Teyla, and John saw Ronon turn as his own gaze came to rest on her. “Sounds like you,” Ronon commented.

John felt oddly betrayed. “Did you know this?”

She looked back at John, surprise on her face. It went some way towards mollifying the brief cramp of betrayal he’d felt squeeze his ribs at not being told. “I...I was not aware of it.”

“I don’t see how you couldn’t be,” Rodney said. “Although it explains why he’s got so many kids - survival of the fittest - Darwin’s theory in action.”

“It explains why Lian’s all over her,” said Ronon.

Teyla glared at Ronon, making John wonder why she never glared at him like that. “If he and his people are sensitive to the Wraith, then they might be useful allies to us.”

The big man didn’t seem bothered by her glare - in fact, he looked more amused than angry. “So do you want him as an ally or a mate?”

As he had once before - at Ford’s hideout - John looked at the two and was reminded of a couple of siblings arguing. Next, Teyla would slap Ronon and it would all descend into full-blown squabbling.

“If they’re willing to trade with us for the Ancient devices - which assumes that they have things they want that we can provide them - then we’ll be allies,” he interrupted before Teyla could formulate a retort. John wasn’t going to mention the other. Sure, Teyla was her own woman, but she had responsibilities to her own people - as well as to the Atlantis expedition. And it had nothing to do with the way John saw her at all. “Do we know of anything they want?”

Silence.

“Medicines, medical aid,” Ronon said. “You provide that to Teyla’s people anyway.”

“Metal,” Rodney said. “Metal things. And raw metals. At least, that was what one of the guys asked about. Ronon’s height, but built really solid. Arms like Arnie. Only bigger.”

Teyla nodded. “The blacksmith. Raw metals would be considered worth the exchange of the devices,” she said.

“Even though he was sitting on them like a dog in the manger?”

The look she turned on him was colder than the freezing cold of a wormhole’s disembodiment phase. “Lian is aware that the devices are of no use to him.”

“But he didn’t want to tell us about them.”

“He trusts you no more than you trust him,” came the reply, with more asperity than she usually used on him. John felt more than a little stung by her continued defence of Lian - as well as distinctly conscious of both Rodney and Ronon were staring. “Colonel--” She paused, her shoulders stiffening as her eyes lifted to the sky.

John felt the chill of foreknowledge trickle down his spine. _Shit. No. Not now._

“Teyla?”

And when she turned to him, her eyes wide and black with fear, he knew he was right. “The Wraith are coming.”

 --

One of John’s first memories of the Pegasus galaxy was a culling - the culling that had changed so many things for John, for the expedition, for the Pegasus galaxy.

This culling was nothing like that first time.

“It’s so organised!” John heard Rodney exclaiming as his team ran through the camp looking for anyone who’d been left behind.

“They have planned for this since they heard of the raids on other planets,” Teyla said as she came down a branch path towards them. “There are caves - including the one where the devices are kept.” Her gaze lifted to the sky. “We should follow them.”

“Might be a good idea to take cover,” said Ronon.

“Take Rodney and head for the caves,” John said to Teyla. “Ronon and I are going for the ‘jumper.”

“Wait! Why’s _he_ going to the ‘jumper?” Rodney swung around from the tent he’d been looking into. “What if you encounter technical difficulties?”

John pushed Rodney in the direction of Teyla. “You won’t make it back to the ‘jumper in time,” he said forcefully. “Ronon and I can do it. You can’t.”

“Colonel!” She caught Rodney’s arm but was still turned towards him. “You cannot fight back.”

Her words stopped him short. “Why not?”

The concern in her expression cut him to the bone. “Because to do so would let the Wraith know that there is more here than just people to be culled,” she said. “If they believe that there are only Noyians, then they will not come back.”

“They’ll just come back to cull them again.”

Ronon’s expression had turned grim. “Resistance is squashed.”

“Look, it’s the only means we have of fighting back--”

“Okay, how about we argue somewhere under _cover_?” Rodney yelled, pointing at the sky where the silvery darts had just begun to appear. “I mean, unless you _want_ to be taken by the Wraith--”

He broke off at that exact moment because Teyla’s head tilted up to look at the sky, her eyes taking on the unfocused look that meant the Wraith were very near. Distantly, he heard the sound of the dart engines, whining through the air with a noise like tearing silk.

“Move,” he ordered Rodney as he grabbed Teyla’s arm. “Come on.” He knew without looking around that Ronon was a step behind him - the man had good survival instincts and wasn’t in a hurry to be recaptured by the Wraith.

She stumbled, temporarily dragging on John’s arm, then regained her footing and shook him off. John intercepted the glance she shot him. After his comments of before, he wasn’t forgiven, not by a long shot.

The team ran through the deserted camp, half an eye on the sky and the darts arrowing in.

“Any idea how many?” John asked her.

“Two,” she said. “They are close.”

He didn’t need to be told that - he already knew it. The screaming engines grew louder and louder in his ears as they passed empty tents, heading down towards the caves where Lian had kept his treasures.

“On us!” Ronon bellowed from behind. John felt himself grabbed by the flak vest and half-dragged aside by the Satedan, almost losing his footing in the process. He stumbled into someone’s set of pots and pans, the clatter barely heard over the all-encompassing whine of the Wraith dart. One foot trod down on the edge of a pot and he hissed as he turned his ankle, but managed the next step.

The shimmering white veil swept past John, missing him by mere inches. Ronon’s grip loosened and he grabbed hold of one of the tent-poles to regain his balance and moved back out into the main thoroughfare, looking for the other two. “Rodney? Teyla?”

He didn’t realise he’d been holding his breath until Rodney’s grumpy protest came from the wreckage of a collapsed tent across the way. “She shoved me!”

Teyla rolled over and accepted John’s hand up, as did Rodney.

“Saved your life,” Ronon grunted from behind them. “And they’re coming back.”

There wasn’t going to be any reprieve for them - not until they got to the caves.

 _At least four hundred yards,_ John thought to himself. _Possibly more._ And that was weaving their way through the tents. He prodded Rodney on. “You can dust yourself off later.”

During one of the passes, Teyla and Rodney took a branch-off, splitting away from the main path. John watched them go and trusted to Teyla’s instincts. She’d get herself and Rodney out of danger; he could rely on that at least.

Running through the camp was a nightmare, dodging and ducking, trying to keep an eye on the darts overhead, tripping over tent lines and bruising themselves on tent-pegs in the process, and herding along those who’d been too slow to get moving when the alarm was given.

They picked up three teens, a couple who’d been out foraging when the Wraith came and were only alerted by the sound of the darts, two kids who’d been playing up on the hill, and an older man who limped along, his joints aching but otherwise hale.

As he jogged alongside the older man and the couple, with Ronon keeping an eye on the darts overhead, John wondered where Lian was. There’d been no sign of the Noyian leader since the attack began, and John wouldn’t have put it past the man to be hiding away while the remnants of his people were left behind.

So he didn’t think much of the guy. He hadn’t been given much reason.

“Sheppard! They’re lining up!”

John risked a glance to the right and behind of him and swore.

It looked like the Wraith pilots were getting sneaky. Instead of flying one at a time, there were two flying side-by-side, doubling their sweep range and making it more difficult for the humans to dodge.

“Split,” he yelled at Ronon. “Double their targets.”

Ronon nodded, and began hustling the couple away, off one of the right-branching tracks.

“You should go ahead,” the older man said calmly. “Leave me here.”

“Not going to happen,” said John, grimly pressing on and looking for a leftwards branch-off. “Nobody gets left behind.”

The older man pushed him aside, “Son, I’ve lived my life!”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure you’ve got a few years yet to go--” The darts were nearly on them. “Come on!”

It was going to be close. Really close. _Too_ close...

John saw the white curtain of the dematerialiser out of the corner of his eye, knew that they weren’t far out enough to play chicken - not successfully.

He had a moment to think of Atlantis, of his team - Rodney, Ronon, Teyla...

Then the guy he was escorting spun around, digging his hands into John’s jacket. Before John could voice anything more than a momentary surprise, the man swung him around and out of the path of the beam, using momentum to fling him out of the way.

A curtain of light flashed by, mere inches from John as he tumbled backwards among crates of something, his sight full of the dark afterimage of the man superimposed on the brilliant white of the dematerialiser beam. He rolled to his feet, grabbing hold of a tent line for balance, but the darts were gone, and so was the Noyian.

In the sky above, the darts turned, preparing to come back.

There was a moment when he considered giving it up. Stepping into the beam and taking his chances with the Wraith...

“Colonel!”

Teyla stood a few yards away at the intersection of paths. Irritation heated John’s skin as he snapped, “I told you to go on with Rodney!”

“Rodney is safe,” she said coolly as he picked his way out of the jumble of household goods into which he’d fallen. “We caught up with other Noyians and he is following them to their hideout.” She looked beyond him. “Where is Ronon?”

“We split,” he said, taking her arm and encouraging her to move with a small push. “The darts are flying side by side - they went one way, we went another.”

She headed off between the maze of tents while John kept a wary eye on the darts coming back for them. “I should have gone for the ‘jumper when they first arrived.”

“They would only send more,” Teyla said briskly. “These people can run from two darts. They cannot run from twenty, or a hundred. Do you remember the culling on Orin’s world?”

John did. It wasn’t one of his better memories, having to sit still and listen to people screaming, running, dying... Only the knowledge that Atlantis needed the information on the Wraith numbers had kept him still - for all that Teyla had accused him of not understanding family.

His need to protect his own family had kept him from fighting back then.

Her need to protect these people - similar to hers - kept him from fighting back now.

They ran through the camp, Teyla keeping an eye where they were going, John keeping an eye on the sky. At least one of the darts had gone, only one screamed overhead, and that one was mostly avoidable.

Mostly.

He caught his foot on a tent peg as they sidestepped another pass by the dart, and tumbled against the heavy canvas of one of the tents, sagging on the unsupported material. They were heavy enough to tip the tent a little, but it had been firmly poled and pegged and they found themselves hanging on a swinging expanse of cloth, unable to get a firm grip on anything to give them leverage with which to stand up.

Teyla’s noise of protest was muffled in the hair just behind his ear, but John was only too aware of the warmth of her body through the material of her BDUs and his. He tried to ignore the feel of her mouth in his hair, her body under his as he flailed around, seeking something solid beneath the tent to help him up. Their proximity was making it har-- difficult.

 _It’s just a reaction to near-death experiences,_ he told himself as he gave up and slid down until he was close enough to the ground that his centre of gravity allowed him to regain his balance. The fact that he’d had to work his way down her body didn’t help matters, but he stood and grabbed her arm to pull her up, careful not to look her in the eye.

“Thank you,” she said, and John told himself the breathlessness in her voice was entirely due to the fact that they’d been running. Still, he didn’t let go of her and she let him pull her along, her hand remaining in his as they reached the edge of the tents and ran across the field, heading for the safety of the caves

John’s neck crawled as they ran across the grassy stubble of the field. His instincts told him that out in the open was the worst place to be with an enemy closing in. Experience reminded him that out in the open was the best place to face the darts, with more room to get out of the way of the sweeping dematerialisers.

Either way, out in the open was the only way they’d make it to the relative safety that the caves might provide.

And he _could_ have gone for the ‘jumper, even if he didn’t fight back.

He hoped to God that Rodney and Ronon had made it to safety; there wasn’t time to check on them, even to radio. He had to trust to their survival instincts.

“Ready to run?”

Her nod was brisk and they ran for it, sprinting across the wide green sward, only too aware that another dart was arrowing in to pick them up if it could. Teyla swiftly outpaced John; for a woman of her stature, she could sure _run_. John kept up as best he could, but the Wraith were coming back...

“Teyla!”

She’d slowed down so John was alongside her; and even as he grabbed her arm, she lunged into him, pushing them both down to the ground and out of the way of the beam. They rolled over, the breath whooshing from their lungs as they hit the ground. On the second roll, as his limbs made contact with the ground, John climbed fluidly to his feet, using his weight as a counterbalance to haul her up with him. It was as neat as if they’d practised it.

Then he saw her hand reaching for her sidearm, and began to turn, reaching for his own P-90.

Her first shots rang out as John got his weapon into position. His first spatter of fire caught the first two Wraith in the chest, not killing them, but slowing them - and giving Teyla enough time to get her own weapon into place.

Four Wraith stood there, one with a face, the other three without. Two were injured, but another had a stunner up and pointed at them.

John spun wide of the blast, moving away from Teyla, forcing the Wraith to follow two targets. Vaguely, he was aware of the dart coming back and clicked his radio on. “Rodney?”

“Sheppard? Where are you? Look, it’s way too--”

John fired his gun one-handed, not really caring if he wasted ammo at this point. He had at least one spare clip, but more Wraith were being beamed down even as he spoke. “Rodney, they’re beaming Wraith down. We’ve got six...eight against Teyla and me. Get us some backup!”

“Backup? From where? Wait! Ronon’s on his way. And Lian.”

“You can show them how to use the stunners,” Teyla’s voice came over the radio. It sounded odd; John could hear her from where she was moving, several yards away, and through the radio.

“What she said, Rodney. And hurry up!” They were outnumbered, there was no cover, and it was getting tiring to dodge the blasts. The Wraith were beginning to spread out, too, making it more difficult to hit them. Things weren’t looking good.

The air was filled with noise: the Wraith dart screaming overhead, the _whomp_ of the stunners, the chatter of bullet-fire; it was hardly surprising that John didn’t hear Ronon approaching until the first gunshot.

They’d tried to take Ronon’s guns apart, to find out what made them work. The energy source was apparently something close to a black box, and Ronon refused to let the scientists take it apart. Rodney had tried to argue Ronon down - as much as he could argue with someone who just waited until he ran out of breath and then said, “No.”

Whatever made it work, however it managed to produce the charge it did, it was damned effective against the Wraith. One collapsed completely, another dropped its stunner but was advancing towards them.

And the dart screamed overhead, the white wave washing over them.

John felt the glow touch him, felt his skin prickle, and realised this was the first time he’d ever been caught up in a dematerialiser...

Then the light faded and the blow caught him in the small of the back.

The dart had been rematerialising Wraith among them, not dematerialising John and his team.

He stumbled, turned, and re-angled his P-90 up to take the Wraith in the chest cavity. Beyond the white, fanged figure Ronon was fighting with both fist and weapon, and Teyla had moved in to take on the last of their initial opponents, using her sidearm in much the same way as she would one of her staves.

Past Ronon, on the ledge of the path up to the caves, John could see others fighting; Lian, the Noyian smith with biceps like Arnie, a middle-aged woman who was wielding a stunner clumsily in the space between the cliff face and the edge of the path.

There wasn’t much space.

Even as John reached for his sidearm - the P90 would be of no use in close quarters except as a club - the smith wrestled one of the Wraith off the ledge, but unbalanced himself in the process and tried to clutch for something - anything - as he fell.

His fingers caught in the long hair of the Wraith fighting Ronon, jerking both Wraith and man out of their close-quarters fight. Wraith and Noyian fell like a stone towards the water of the river below; Ronon teetered at the edge, trying to regain his balance.

John ran forward, hooking his fingers into the Satedan’s jacket and yanking him back, then peered out into the river. He didn’t give the man much hope for survival in the chilly runoff, but they’d take the ‘jumper out to look for him when they managed to hold off the Wraith.

Further along the slate path, Lian was fighting a Wraith in close quarters, using a stunner as his staff. If John hadn’t believed that Lian was anything like Teyla, he couldn’t deny the evidence of his eyes - the man had the same uncanny instincts as Teyla when it came to fighting. Every blow from the Wraith, every swipe, every thrust was matched and met as Lian battled against it, the handsome face fierce with concentration.

“There are more in the cave,” Ronon said as he pulled a knife and flung it. The Wraith paused in its attack, trying to claw the hilt from between his shoulder blades. Lian used the opportunity to slam the end of the stunner into the creature’s gut, throwing it off the ledge.

Beyond him, the woman wasn’t quite so skilled. Hadn’t been so skilled. Her face was blank and hollow as the Wraith drained life force from her. John lifted his gun as Ronon pulled a second knife and Lian raised the stunner.

The Wraith probably never knew what hit it.

Lian knelt by the woman as she collapsed, shaking her. “Ginean!”

Ronon slipped past Lian and the woman, up to the cave. A touch at John’s shoulder showed Teyla, pushing him after their team-mate. “Some have entered the cave,” she said. “Go. I will help bring her in.”

He ran.

Inside the cave, there were shouts and cries, whimpers that echoed oddly through the caverns of the cave - and the sound of bullets being fired. Rodney was somewhere in there, defending himself - and possibly others. Ronon was already fighting a Wraith, barely holding his own. Further in the shadows, one of the Noyians struggled against the Wraith - nothing more than a dark blur behind the armoured back of the creature.

John pulled his sidearm and looked for an opportunity to fire.

His best chance was to get a shot in while the Wraith’s back was turned - distraction, the way Ronon had helped Lian despatch the Wraith back on the ledge.

There were no chances.

As if the creature was aware of his thoughts, it kept Ronon between John and itself, leaving no opportunity for him to fire. Its compatriot further in was more accommodating, and John shifted along the edge of the cave, aimed, and fired. Four bullets found their mark in its back, piercing its leather like armour so it arched in pain and protest. It collapsed, letting go of its victim - a woman whose pale, adult face was an ugly shade of grey - and he started across the cave towards her.

Ronon made a grunting noise as the Wraith landed a blow in his belly, then another on his head. As he doubled over, the creature laid its hand on his throat, the garish mouth spreading in pleased profile as it began to drain Ronon’s life-force.

John fired, almost blindly, saw the Wraith jerk back, and his finger tightened on the trigger again--

The stunner blast came out of the shadows, slamming into him with brutal force. It knocked him down, butting his head against the floor. His vision jolted, bright then dark, and when it stabilised, the pale face staring malevolently down at him was no comfort at all.

His gun was somewhere on the sandy floor, and the punch he swung at the Wraith was blocked - swatted, like an errant fly.

The slit-palmed hand reached out, almost lazily towards his throat, and John swivelled his legs, trying to kick the hungry hand away.

A volley of bullets took the Wraith in the skull, puncturing hard bone and tearing out brain matter. John flinched back, pressing his shoulder blades even further into the rock-and-sand of the cave bottom. The creature began to collapse, the gore-spattered face falling towards John in eerie slow-mo. Instinctively panicking, he kicked out at the creature, heaving his body away from the grisly sight.

Another four shots rang out, then a strong grip on his jacket helped him away from the Wraith, and John looked down into Teyla’s anxious face. “It did not touch you?”

He shook his head. “Didn’t get that close. Thanks.”

She smiled at briefly him, but her gaze was already turning away. “You are welcome.” He followed her as she stepped beyond him, past Ronon who was on his knees, gasping, but apparently none the worse for the Wraith’s attack on him, to where Lian was propping a woman upright, his fingers pushing her hair back from her face.

John stifled the automatic anger he felt at her attendance on the Noyian and went to Ronon instead, crouching down to lay a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “You gonna be okay?”

Dark eyes glanced up, “Yes.” Ronon took a deep breath and rubbed at his chest where the throat of his shirt lay open. Absently, John remembered that Ronon was immune to the Wraith. “McKay was shooting something.”

John clicked his radio, “Rodney?”

“We’re all fine here. Well, a bit squashed in, but we’re alive.” There was a grunting noise and Rodney’s voice grew faint. “It’s a device - no you may not-- Because I say you can’t! Sheppard?” Rodney was speaking directly into the radio again.

“Still here.”

“Teyla and Ronon?”

Ronon was already climbing to his feet, reaching for his gun and headed back to the entrance to the cave. Teyla glanced back at John, her face oddly shadowed in the dimness of the cave. “They’re fine.”

“Are there more coming?”

If he concentrated past the murmuring echoes of the cave, he could still hear the darts screaming by. And in that moment, Ronon lifted his gun and began firing again.

John followed. “That’s an affirmative.”

“‘Yes’ would have done,” Rodney’s grumble was just audible before the radio went silent. John was concerned for a second; then the echoes further in the cave took on the cadence and tone of an irritated astrophysicist explaining something to people he considered of inferior intellect. Hard-pressed to keep the smile off his face, John concentrated on stopping any more Wraith from reaching the cave.

Between him and Ronon, they stopped the next party dead. It took more ammo than John liked - the Wraith just refused to lie down and die properly - and then another party of Wraith was beamed down.

John ducked back behind the ledge to reload, frowning. “How many darts did they bring?” So far, they’d shot down at least a dozen Wraith - far more than would be expected in your standard hunting party.

Usually all it took was two or three to cow a settlement - why so many this time?

“At least three,” Ronon grunted. “Probably more.”

“Did they get anyone?”

“Some. Older people. They stayed behind to draw the Wraith away.” Ronon sounded revolted by the idea, but respectful.

John winced. “Yeah, I...saw.” Absently, he resolved to find out the name of the older man - if he had to question every Noyian to get it.

With his P-90 reloaded, John went back to picking off the Wraith. At least the Wraith couldn’t beam into the cave, even if they _could_ aim their stunners at the points where John and Ronon were leaning around the edge of the cave.

Then a well-timed blast spun John around, shoving him back from the shoulder. He got his finger off the trigger before the arc of his aim got to Ronon, but it was close.

“Teyla!” Ronon didn’t even glance at her as John eased himself over to the wall.

She knelt beside him. “Are you okay?”

He was massaging his shoulder, “Numb,” he said simply. “Do they need help behind?”

“Rodney is giving them a lesson in the Wraith stunners,” she said as she brought up her weapon, staying just out of sight of the opening. She ducked around and blasted off a few rounds with her typical precision; Teyla made her shots count. She leaned back behind the sheltering rock again. “They are not fast learners.”

“He’s not a very good teacher,” John noted, climbing to his feet and wincing as a dozen small aches made themselves known to him, from the ankle he’d earlier twisted to the pins-and-needles of his numb shoulder. “Hold here and radio me if there’s a problem.”

The dead Wraith on the floor matched their counterparts on the wall, and from the footprints dragging across the floor it looked like Lian had helped the woman back to the caves where the Noyians were hiding.

Tunnels twisted this way and that, massed voices echoing down the rough shafts with the slightly formal speech of the Noyians. And one very distinctive, very aggravated Canadian accent coming through loud and clear. John followed that path with something like a smile and something like a wince.

“Don’t hold it like a spear! It’s a stunner! You want it pointed higher!”

A loose semicircle of Noyians closed around Rodney, who was scowling at one man. He’d forgotten just how bad a teacher Rodney was. A lack of patience with your students was the first way to persuade them that they’d never want to learn what you were teaching; either that, or they’d never want to learn it from you.

“Rodney,” John said with a nod at the Noyians. “I see you’re being your usual tactful self.”

The scientist looked up at him with a slight frown across his features. “What are you doing here?”

Rodney’s bluntness didn’t nettle him; after eighteen months, John was used to the other man’s complete lack of tact. “And it’s good to see you, too,” he replied.

“Shouldn’t you be helping Teyla and Ronon?”

The Noyians ranged from the adolescent to nearly John’s age. “Got hit in the shoulder,” he said, rolling the injured joint. “Figured I’d come and see how the troops were coming along.” He flashed a brief grin at the assembled people.

“They’re dreadful,” Rodney said without shame or hesitation, looking sourly along the line of Noyians who looked either hurt or exasperated.

One of the adolescent boys burst out, “If he would teach us how to use these weapons instead of harping about how we are not of the standard--”

“I do not harp!”

John reached out to take the stunner from the nearest person - a young woman whose polite and careful gaze reminded him of Teyla the first time they’d met. With a faint frown, he wondered where Umaya was. He’d have expected she’d be somewhere among the ones trying to fight back. “Hold it under your arm, like this,” he demonstrated, wincing as his shoulder protested. The feeling was definitely returning. “Then it’s got somewhere to go when the recoil happens.”

At the blank looks he got when he mentioned recoil, John shook his head. “Never mind. Stay behind the rock ledge - there’s no point in getting a shot off if they hit you in the process. And watch where you’re pointing that thing,” he added, indicating one of the young women who was aiming her weapon at him. “Friendly fire isn’t. And if Ronon or Teyla tell you to do something - don’t hesitate, it might save your life.”

“Won’t be necessary,” said Ronon.

John turned to where his friend stood at the entrance of this set of tunnels. “They’ve gone?”

Ronon shrugged, “Apparently.” There were sighs of relief from the assembled group. Apparently they’d been willing to fight the Wraith, they just didn’t much want to. John couldn’t blame them - wasn’t that what he was doing in Pegasus? Still, Ronon looked rather grim, and he couldn’t help asking, “Teyla?”

“Keeping an eye out.”

“Will they be back?” The question burst from the young man who’d objected to Rodney’s comment.

John, Ronon and Rodney exchanged looks.

“Well, sooner or later they’ll be back,” Rodney said after a moment. “Now that they know you’re here.”

From the fearful looks among the Noyians, Rodney’s pronouncement wasn’t good news. “But for the moment,” John said, “You’re safe.”

“And when they come back?”

“You’ll deal with that when you have to,” John told them as Ronon turned away to check on Teyla.

“That time may come sooner than later,” said Lian from one of the side passages. His voice grated slightly, harsh with an anger that flared as he looked at John. “We will hold council when we return to the camp. In the meantime,” he looked directly at John, “There is someone who wishes to see you.”

 --

At first he didn’t recognise the woman leaning back against the rough rock of one of the caves, her face in shadow, furs wrapped around her shoulders.

Then she raised her head, and the dark eyes speared through him.

“Am I old enough now?”

John hoped he managed to keep the shock he felt off his features as he looked at the expression on the now-mature face; the bitter mockery that tinged Umaya’s features, undisguised. As it was, he felt cold, just looking at her.

He’d shot the Wraith in the back four times and only glimpsed a woman’s face by the flickering light of the torches set. There’d been no connection between the girl who’d confronted him and the pale, grey-faced woman who gasped for air, life, and the youth that was lost her.

No-one quite knew what it was the Wraith took from humans. Life, certainly, but _exactly_ what part of ‘life’ wasn’t known. Carson said it was a mystery as life itself was a mystery, and then confessed that he didn’t know. The only thing they knew for sure was that it aged a person physically. The Wraith child Ellia had drained years from her adopted father, until his own father didn’t recognise him. Colonel Everett had aged decades in the span of hours, while Colonel Sumner had gone from forty to ninety in the blink of John’s eye, drained by the gatekeeper before John gave him mercy.

Now Umaya looked up at John with the face of a woman in her mid-thirties, but the angry, hurt eyes of a child. She might look of an age with him now, but John could see the fifteen year-old staring out of the woman’s face.

“Umaya--”

“It was never just my age, was it?” She said, her eyes never leaving his face. John felt stripped bare by the ferocity of her gaze.

“No,” he said. “I said it wasn’t.”

Now she dropped her eyes, the flush touching her cheeks. For a moment, it gave her the youth she’d lost. “And I did not believe you.”

She hadn’t wanted to believe him.

“What’ll happen?” John wasn’t sure he wanted to know what the Noyians would do with Umaya - looking older than Lian, but half his age. He turned to Lian who still stood at the door, his expression hard. “What’ll happen to her?”

The Noyian leader shrugged. “She will learn to live with what has been done to her.” If Lian didn’t seem to have any pity for Umaya, at least he wasn’t contemptuous or horrified. “As we will learn to live with the Wraith dogging our heels.” He glanced past John to Umaya, and stalked away.

John turned back to the once-girl, but she was staring at her hands as though seeing them for the first time. “We have people who can counsel you about this,” he said. “If you want to talk to someone about this--”

“And what could be done other than talk?” The dark eyes fixed him, their anguish evident, even in the darkness of the cave.

“At least you’re alive.” It was trite, but she managed something like a smile.

“Yes.” And she fixed her gaze on her hands again.

John left her sitting in the room. Not alone at least, a gaggle of women of varying ages entered the cave room as he left, but thoughtful.

He went back through the caves, absently remembering the turns he’d taken, looking for either his team or Lian. They’d have to call back to Atlantis, let them know what happened. Offer the Noyians assistance in moving if they wanted to move, or help if they wanted to rebuild. There was still the technology to be bargained - although their help in defending the Noyians might earn them some goodwill, at least among people who weren’t Khenar Lian - and _why_ had he ever thought that leadership was a cool thing?

John wondered if it was too late to ask to be assigned to another posting.

“John! John-John-John-John!” Anneka bounced up beside him, co-opting his hand. “Did you see the Wraith? Were you out there fighting? Milla said you were probably somewhere in the caves, but Umaya said you’d be fighting them and she went to help! I wanted to help, but Milla wouldn’t let me go. And we ran and were scared but they’ve gone away now, haven’t they?”

Assaulted by the verbal flood, John half-smiled. “Yeah, they’re gone. Shouldn’t you be with Milla?”

The little girl shook her head. “Milla’s talking with Makhel,” she said. “Again.”

And this after she’d tried to seduce John earlier today. “Fast worker,” John muttered, more to himself than the kid. “Okay,” he said at normal volume. “I’m looking for my friends and Lian because we need to talk about what happened here. But this is big-people stuff, so I think you should go and find one of your friends.”

Shoulders sagged and the little face scrunched up in disgust. “But I want to go with you!”

“Anneka.” The tone of voice had worked on him when he was a kid, he didn’t see why it wouldn’t work on her.

She scowled at him, huffed and stomped away.

John sighed. Older kids - Jinto’s age - he could manage; Anneka was old enough to have a bad case of hero-worship, but young enough to be stubborn. And he had a feeling the conversation that was about to take place shouldn’t be witnessed by the kids.

There were raised voices ahead, carrying through the weirdly-shaped tunnels. One of them was Rodney’s, high with disbelief, while Ronon’s words were short and sharp, and Teyla’s smoother tones and uneven cadences resonated calmly through the thread of discussion.

John pushed past the people who gathered warily at the edge of the cavern, listening to the argument but not participating in it.

“You can’t go back on your word like that!” Rodney expostulated.

“I can and I will,” Lian said, his eyes nearly black as John sauntered up.

“Something going on here?”

He knew what the problem was even before Rodney opened his mouth. “He’s not going to trade the devices with us anymore!”

John took a deep breath and tried to remember that they had an audience. Now was not the time to get angry. Forceful, perhaps, but not angry.

Lian was speaking. “I have had time to think, and the things of the Ancestors were brought here for a purpose. To disturb them is folly.”

“Folly?” Rodney spluttered. “It’s folly to have all this stuff collected and never use it! This place is a mausoleum!”

Lian’s expression didn’t change, although he arched a brow at the description.

“A place where the dead are interred,” Teyla said from the side. Her voice was more moderate, and the man actually _listened_ to what she was saying, instead of dismissing it outright. “Lian, the things of the Ancestors were not meant to be kept stored and unused. That is not why the Ancestors created them. Let them be used for their original purpose.”

“You do not know their original purpose.” Okay, so Lian was listening, he just didn’t heed what she was saying.

“Then give them the chance to find it out,” Ronon said, making it sound like something obvious.

Blue eyes rested on Ronon, narrow and calculating. “ _Them_?” Lian asked softly. “You work with them, live with them, but you do not identify with them.”

Ronon tensed. So did John. When Ronon got angry, things tended to get exciting. “They’re doing something about the Wraith,” said the Satedan after a moment. “That’s more than you are.”

“I have responsibilities to my people!”

“So does Teyla; that doesn’t stop her from fighting back.”

John couldn’t have said it better himself. And it sounded good coming from Ronon - more valid from another Pegasus native.

“Not all of life is about fighting back,” flashed Lian. “And if my people fought back the Wraith would simply obliterate us. We are not Sateda, Ronon Dex.”

If anything, the mention of his ruined homeworld only made Ronon more furious. Still, he managed to keep his temper - when Teyla caught his eye. The words he’d been going to say were bitten back and he settled for a terse comment. “I can see that.”

“Look, Lian, you can’t use the Ancients’ technology.” John kept his voice level and low, both to avoid the distorting echoes and to make his point clear. This wasn’t the time to get angry and start yelling - at least, it wasn’t the time to start yelling; he was already angry. “You don’t have the people to use it, you don’t have the technology to modify yourselves to be able to use it. _We can_. If you give the devices to us - or trade them, whichever you prefer - then we can make them work. That was our original bargain.”

“That bargain was made before the Wraith found us,” said Lian.

“Which has absolutely nothing to do with the bargain,” Rodney exclaimed, throwing his hands out in exasperation. “You still can’t use the devices and won’t ever be able to.”

“Perhaps not,” Lian spoke, his voice gentle and oddly lethal. “But I can prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.”

“Lian--”

Teyla’s interruption went unheeded.

John felt anger rush through him, intoxicating as desire, fierce as a punch in the gut. “The wrong hands?”

“What are you talking about?” Rodney was protesting, “We’re the good guys here!”

“So you tell me,” Lian said, unperturbed by their protests. “And yet it was your coming to this galaxy that prompted the start of the Wraith raids.” He looked from John to Rodney and back to John again. “It was your coming to this planet that prompted the raid upon my people.”

“That was pure coincidence,” John argued, his eyes narrow.

“Oh? As was the raid upon Teyla’s people the day you arrived in her camp as you arrived in mine today?” Lian looked at Teyla. “I am not so trusting as she.”

“Lian.” Teyla’s voice cut through the argument, clear and edged like a knife. “They have proved themselves no friend to the Wraith. This is all happenstance - no design to it.”

The Noyian man didn’t look away from John’s eyes. It was like an adolescent staring competition, neither man willing to look away. “You still believe that?”

“I do.”

“In the face of the trouble your people have seen? In spite of what you have witnessed here? You said it yourself: turmoil and the Wraith come hard on the heels of your ‘friends’ and yet you follow them, blind to their faults.”

John could barely believe what he was hearing. And if John was angry, Teyla didn’t seem much less furious. “Not so blindly as you would believe.”

He’d only heard that tone of voice from her a handful of times; most usually directed at others, but once or twice turned upon him. Right now, he was just as glad it was aimed at Lian. “Teyla’s not an idiot,” John added. “We’ve earned her trust.”

“You have not earned mine.”

“Then give us a chance! Look, we defended your people against the Wraith!”

“You brought the Wraith to us.”

John couldn’t believe this. The man was beyond paranoid. “Look,” he said forcefully. “We came here on a whim. We met you and were willing to trade. The Wraith attack was just a coincidence. They’re attacking everywhere.”

“And who is responsible for that, John Sheppard of Atlantis?” Lian’s voice had gone whiplike and cold, and his expression was terrible. “Who was it woke the Wraith up in such numbers; leaving us prey to their depredations?”

John paused, stung by the accusation. “That was an accident. And, if you haven’t noticed, we’re not ‘leaving you prey’ to the Wraith. We’re in the middle of it, trying to clean things up!”

“By taking what you feel is your right?”

“If you’re referring to the devices, we’re willing to _trade_ for them! If we were going to just take them from you, then we wouldn’t be bothering with this conversation. We’d just come back and steal them when your back was turned.” Disgusted with the man, and frustrated with the conversation, John emphasised his point. “We’re not like that.”

“So you say.”

“So we are!” Rodney snapped. “So are you going to trade us the devices or are you going to point fingers and complain about how bad things are?”

John wondered if Rodney was aware of the irony in his statement.

“We will not trade the devices. That is my final word on the matter.”

“Lian--”

“No.” He cut her off, finally turning to look at her. John felt his fingers twitch at the way Lian was looking at her. “You trust them, Teyla. I cannot - I _will_ not. If you wish to bring your people here to live among mine, then they are welcome. _You_ are welcome here.” There was venom in the look he shot at John. “They and their people are not.”

She hesitated a long moment - long enough to make John nervous. He’d never really discussed his awakening of the Wraith in Pegasus with Teyla; and Lian might be angry, but he was still charismatic. Just because Teyla was angry didn’t mean she wouldn’t listen; and just because Lian was wrong didn’t mean she mightn’t take his words to heart.

Still, whatever she thought of Lian’s opinions of Atlantis, she kept her ground. “I will tell my people of your offer,” she said after a moment. “But I do not think they will accept. If you will not give or trade us the devices, will you accept our help to rebuild?”

“Your help, or theirs?”

“My help _and_ theirs.”

Lian’s expression grew cold. “No,” he said. “We will not. You may hope for the destruction of the Wraith, Teyla. I cannot.”

“So you’ll run and hide from the Wraith forever?”

The Noyian man glared at Ronon. “We will do what we must to survive. Our peoples survived before they came to our lands; we will continue as we have done in the past.”

“We’re not asking for a lot,” said John, trying one more time. He had the feeling he was only making his case worse, but he had to give it a shot. “You’ll get things you need in exchange - things you can actually use. The Ancients’ devices aren’t any good to you.”

“You’re not even using them!” Rodney burst out, exasperated beyond patience. “You’re just being selfish about them!”

Lian’s expression didn’t change, but he shifted slightly. It wasn’t quite a challenge, but John tensed in reaction, his instincts waiting for the first strike. It didn’t come. “I believe you have made your point as I have made mine,” Lian said, his voice colder than ice. “I ask you to leave, now.”

John was feeling just angry enough to consider asking what the man would do if they didn’t. Then Teyla caught his eye and her head jerked ever so slightly toward the entrance to the cave. She felt it was time for them to leave, not to stand around and argue. Privately, John was inclined to agree.

“All right, then,” he said. “We’ll leave. But the offer remains open: those devices in exchange for any help you want or need.”

Lian shrugged. “We have survived in times past; we will do so again.”

And that was that.

Still, as he turned to make sure his team were coming, John noticed that Lian had caught Teyla’s arm and was saying something to her, too low to hear. He waved Ronon and Rodney on, and waited.

John didn’t call her, didn’t command her, didn’t say a thing or even look at her. He just stood in the cavern entrance, exchanging a few quiet words with the Noyians willing to thank him and his team, told Anneka that he probably wouldn’t be coming back and that she should grow up strong to fight the Wraith, and waited for Teyla.

She would be coming back to Atlantis. He knew it deep in his bones.

Still, when she turned away from Lian and walked towards him, John felt a surge of triumph, pleasurable and undiplomatic. It wasn’t a competition, but it was.

Lian glared at John, but John didn’t smile, didn’t smirk, didn’t gloat. He didn’t need to.

Teyla had made her choice, and Lian was the loser from it.

As he followed Teyla out of the cave, keeping an eye on the caramel-coloured hair a few steps in front, something quivered deep in his soul - a momentary recognition of what this team-mate of his truly meant to him.

Then they caught up to Rodney and Ronon, and John forgot everything other than the desire to get home to Atlantis.

 --

He didn’t look around as the door behind him hissed open.

There was something calming about the breeze off the sea, redolent with salt and heavy with brine. John figured it was an association back to his childhood - the four years his family spent in Vandenburg while his dad was stationed at the nearby Air Force base.

It was probably one of the reasons that Atlantis felt so much like _home_ to him.

“You are not going to play cards tonight?”

As Teyla drew up beside him at the railing, he glanced at her but turned his face back to the sunset. The poker nights were a semi-regular occurrence, played with matchsticks rather than money - matchsticks that could be traded in for bonus ‘treats’ at mess times. It was a chance not only to relax, but also socialise - particularly between the various strata of the expedition. Usually, John was happily in there, throwing down his bets and winning and losing according to how his luck ran. Tonight... “I’m not really in the mood.”

He was feeling restless - as restless as the wind that whipped around him, chilly in the air as the sun set. He’d been restless since they returned from the Noyian planet.

Maybe it was just his conflict with Khenar Lian, maybe just the fact that the Noyians had all that Ancient tech and weren’t going to give it to them anytime soon, or maybe it was just a mood coming upon him.

Maybe it was that Teyla had been pensive ever since they returned to Atlantis, looking at the city with eyes that seemed to measure what had become familiar against what had been familiar.

Atlantis was home to John, as much for the people as for the weather, but he _knew_ the city welcomed him. He felt a sense of _belonging_ here that would have been just as strong if it had been him, alone in the city, walking through empty corridors, discovering the Ancient devices that glowed at his touch.

He didn’t imagine that Teyla had the same sense of belonging to the city.

That didn’t mean she didn’t belong here.

John had closed his eyes against the brilliant orange-scarlet rays, but she sighed as she turned to leave, disconcerted by his silence.

“So,” he said without looking around, “Not planning a trip back to see the Noyians anytime soon?”

She didn’t take the first step away, “I would be little more welcome than you, Colonel,” she replied. “At least for a while.”

“Because you didn’t stay?”

“Because they will be too busy determining whom they have lost and what they will do.”

John opened his eyes at her reproachful tones and turned towards her. “Didn’t you say you were going to go back?” She’d mentioned it as they prepared themselves for the flight back across the planet to the Stargate and Atlantis and again in the debriefing.

Teyla shrugged and came to stand by him at the railing. “I did,” she confirmed. “However, it will not be soon.” Her eyes found his. “And I will not be speaking of the Ancient devices during those first few visits. It will take them some time to accept that they can benefit from what we are offering. The Noyians are a practical people, they will see the benefit in what you offer them.”

“What _we_ offer them,” John corrected her, including her in the association. “You’re a part of Atlantis, too, Teyla.”

She shrugged, then winced and began rolling her shoulders. “Ronon and I are...different,” she confessed. “Lian saw it. You have accepted us, but all the same, we do not fit among your people.”

“That’s not a reason to leave.”

“No,” she agreed. “It is not. If you have not noticed, neither Ronon nor I feel any need to leave Atlantis at the present time.”

It was the time clause that bothered him. “And in the future?”

Teyla turned towards him. “I do not know what the future holds,” she said with some asperity. “It may be that something will cause me to leave Atlantis - but I can see nothing at this stage.”

“Good.” The word escaped him before he could censor it, and he scrambled to cover his ass. “I mean...we’d miss you. We’re used to you by now.” Inspiration struck. “And who’d be left in Atlantis to kick my butt and keep me humble?”

Her smile was swift and wry. “I am sure you would find _someone_ to keep you humble, Colonel. You survived for many years before we met.”

“Yeah, well, I’m used to _you_ by now,” he said, keeping his voice light.

John wished he could keep his thoughts as light, but Lian’s voice kept replaying in his head. _Who was it woke the Wraith up in such numbers; leaving us prey to their depredations?_

He’d never discussed this with Teyla - not directly. They’d danced around it the first few days she was in Atlantis, simply speaking of how to fight the Wraith without any mention of why it was such a priority. Now he wanted to know - for better or worse.

“Lian blamed me for the Wraith in Pegasus,” John said after a second’s hesitation. He turned to stare back out at the sea so he wouldn’t have to see her expression. “Do you?”

The silence was filled with the evening wind’s lonely whistle and the gentle wash of the tide over the piers far below them. “You woke the Wraith in greater numbers than has been heard of since the last Great Culling,” she said at last. “So, yes, you have brought these circumstances down upon us.”

John exhaled slowly. On one hand, he knew he was responsible for the number of Wraith that were active through the galaxy. On the other, knowing it himself was very different to hearing her say it.

A gust of wind shuddered through him, chilling him to the bone, and he shivered and tried to let it pass - tried to let her words pass through him - to let them not matter.

She touched his shoulder.

“However, you and the others in Atlantis have stayed to fight the Wraith. I do not forget that, and neither does Ronan. That is why we stay.”

“You know that at least part of it’s because of Atlantis.” It wasn’t just responsibility that kept the expedition here, although John knew it was a significant part of both his and Elizabeth’s personal reasons for sticking this out.

Teyla’s mouth curved in a slight smile. “I know. That does not change that you are doing what you can.”

“And when we beat the Wraith?”

“Then I have no doubt that Ronon will re-evaluate his life and his goals,” she said. “As will I and my people. But I do not think that day is too near.”

“It may be nearer than you think.”

Teyla gave him a sidelong look. “As is the day when Rodney’s superior intellect will beat you at cards?”

John snorted, feeling a lot better. “The only way Rodney would manage that is if he took the pack of cards and beat me over the head with it.” He pushed up from his slouch at the railing. “Although I suppose he’s boasting again?”

“When is he not?” The limpid smile gave a mischievous cast to her face, almost spritely. It wasn’t a side of her she showed to many people, and John appreciated that he was one of the trusted. “Does that mean you will join us for cards?”

“If I have a reputation to keep, then, yes.” He indicated the path back to the door. “Shall we?”

She led the way, but at the door, John touched her arm, turning her to face him. “Teyla?”

“Colonel?”

There were a lot of things he could have said - so many things he wanted to say. _I’m sorry about the Wraith. I’m glad we have you on our side. I’m glad you’re staying with us._ He settled for, “Thanks.”

One brow arched, delicate as a bird’s wing lifting. “You are welcome, John.”

And with a faint, self-conscious smile, John went into Atlantis and the people who awaited him there.


End file.
